Holes, heat, geothermal and stuff

Some of you may recall that last year when the well driller said he would drill a bit deeper in our existing well, for about $2000, things went terribly, TERRIBLY wrong!

450 feet later and $21,000 lighter,we have a water supply good enough to obtain a building permit.

I asked well guy to de-commission the old well. Well guy clamped his hand over my mouth, looked suspiciously into the nearby bushes and said, " Shhhh! Never, ever utter the words 'decommissioned well, or you are opening up a whole world of red tape and heartache for yourself. That is not a decommissioned well. That is 320 feet of geothermal heating potential." I think that bit of advice was worth at least a couple hundred bucks.

I know NOTHING about geothermal. We are wood heat people but Hubby grows weary of spending all summer getting wood for all winter. I grow weary of Big Ugly Wood dropping on my toes, smoke, bugs in the house and cobwebs sturdy enough to tow trucks out of ditches with. We will never give up wood heat completely as it has a homey warmth that I have never found with any other heating source. BUT..it's getting old, and so are we.

This thermal hole is on a vacant property. If we are to utilize it, we will have to build on said property. I have looked at some GT systems and frankly, I will NOT live long enough to reap the benefits of any heat system that costs more than $15,000 to install. I am hoping there is a simpler way to utilize geothermal. I will not install infloor heat, as wonderful as it is, I fear ANYTHING liquid in my flooring or basement concrete. I want this simple, simple, simple so that a grade 9 student with a flashlight and toothpick could repair it. No bells or whistles. Just take hot air in and blow it into a duct. But this seems to be a MAJOR operation with geothermal.

We just had a cold snap (wimpy by Alberta standards) but even when it hit -18 outisde, I was barefoot in the house. Our basement is heated and it seeps into a floor that is not warm, but not cold either. You do not need infloor heat for comfy floors, but you do need heat beneath you. I would stay with a simple furncae/blower system with a back-up of oil or wood.

If anyone has input (I am sure I asked this before but what the heck, will ask again) I am open to ideas. If you could start from scratch, what would you do with building and heating plans? And here in BC, cooling plans?

One other thing...says you can collect GT heat in a trench that is 6-8 feet deep. Then why, with our basements buried 6-8 feet, does the building inspector insist that we insulate outer wall of the buried portion, thus, to my way of thinking, blocking OUT any potential earth gained heat? That just seems stupid to me, but perhaps there is some technical gobbledygook I am not clued in to. I can walk downstairs right now and put my hand on the concrete floor, UNINSULATED since we built before that requirement came into effect and it is cool, but NOT cold. That concrete is a serious heat sink. The basement holds its temp WAY BETTER than the upstairs. We build our houses wrong for this climate!

Okay. Forget it. Forget I asked this. My brain is obviously well below par and this was a stupid question.

Read this post to Hubby who said, "heat is a bad word. Heat is not heat. Do not think of heat as heat, but think of it as energy. Think of it as energy moving from one body to another. A law of thermodynamics states that heat moves from a hot body to a cold body so the concrete of your basement sucks heat OUT of your house. But lines in the ground will suck heat/energy INTO themselves and move it INTO your house blah, blah, gaggle, snort, yapp yapp..." And I quit listening and started to cry. The only thing I could think of to say was, "Go shower, you stink." It's true. He does stink. Run a Letournea all day, you stink. Sorry people, these are the facts.

Geothermal heat can be used to help heat the water for a shower. My take on the heating system is that it works like your frigerator by gathering energy over a large area and releasing it in a smaller area. Since you already have the hole in the ground you have a huge part of the system. In floor heating is one of the ways of distributing the heat.

building inspector insist that we insulate outer wall of the buried portion, thus, to my way of thinking, blocking OUT any potential earth gained heat?

the key thing here is the outside wall, it sticks up out of the ground letting the frost at it, insulate it to keep the frost out. now your basement floor is not in contact with frost and will remain at 52 degrees, ground temperature, a good place to start heating from when it below 0 outside.

GT heat is great for long term, but like you said who has that long left. I think you can heat hot air with it also for a blower system. now infloor heat can also be installed under a wood floor but does not work as good as it does in concrete.

well that's about all I know about "that"

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