DIY Geothermal Chill Water Air Conditioning Part 1

Video shows how I ran the piping, tested for leaks, shows my heat exchanger and describes how I plan to use chill water to get nearly free A/C to my home.

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Howto & Style

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• P1000138

[alvinshep51]

Jim, You want to see my gas bills over the last 6 months. I'm averaging a 14.00 dollar a month gas bill.

[alvinshep51]

Jimdonnel, Yeah and if man was meant to fly he'd have wings

[alvinshep51]

@alvinshep51 I have found out within the last month that an old saying was truly just a fable. That is if you go down deep enough the ground is always at 55F degrees. This is simply not true and ground temperature will vary by your geograpic area. Such as if you live in Alaska you will have an average ground temperature of 40F. However in Atlanta it will be 62F. Also this temperature is only constant below 30 feet deep. At 10 feet it can fluctuate by 5 degrees summer to winter.

[alvinshep51]

@alvinshep51 (Part 2) At only 5 feet deep it can fluctuate by 10F degrees. When I learned this information which is very reliable as it was published by the American Society Of Heating, Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Engineers. With that said I began to realize that my hopes of cooling my home down in the summer were lost. I know enough about air conditining to know that I must over come the load of hot air trying to enter my home and there would be no way to do that starting out that high.

[alvinshep51]

Dsenter, I beleve the coil you are refering to with the 3/4" pipes that were added to both ends? That came from a round A/C unit but really any unit will work as long as the coil circles the unit in one piece and the tubes are made of copper. The copper used in these coils is soft so to straigthen it out all you need to do is lay it on a flat surface like a clean driveway and walk it out flat being careful not to bend the fins. over.

[alvinshep51]

Jay, I think this is a good idea. I believe the larger the piping the better. Sorta like my batch water heater. Less flow = less temp change during circulation = less temp rise within the ground temperature. I'm not sure how much this would be effected. I had thought of your idea as well but was worried that having a tank in one area would eventually cause the ground temperature to rise. My batch water heater lines "seemed" to raise the ground temp. but this could be a false observation.

[CheapEnergyIdeas]

was going to tell you your trench was too shallow because your avg ground temp in summer at that depth is high,but i see you figured it out..you need to be down 8-10ft or more to hit 60f range 4 horizontal and a vert shaft of 100ft plus would be nice or a spring water source on your land. never tried this but..post hole digger bore down to 10ft, insulated pex down to copper coil and then pex back up again and repeat! peace.

[TheSquirrelsnutz]

Ok I have been doing Geothermal for a few years now and can tell you that the way to make this work is to drill holes Aprox 130 ft down will suffice. The deeper you go the better it will cool. PVC is not Insulating and will actually raise the water temp at 18" in the ground. Pex is better but you need to insure that it is the self insulating type. Also in your holes fill them with Grout to dramaticly increase the insulating effect. Any other questions let me know I can help

[jaydaddymc]

I have been thinking of doing something like this. But I plan on going a LOT deeper, I want to auger a couple of holes down 20 or 30 ft. and then coil my closed loop tubing down into the holes. Then I will bring the lines up to my attic where I already have a large air intake box for my central A/C. In that box, I will sync a few radiators that will fit and attach the line of the closed loop system. If this works, all I would have to do is leave the A/C off but keep the fan on. Im hoping...

[dsenters1]

what did the thing your goin to use for your heat exchanger come out of ive never seen 1 that big it would b a perfect collector 4 a solar hot water heater i would love to find 1 if i knew what it came out of