I’m Bryan Roberts — Sr. Power Marketing consultant. I joined Dandelion Geothermal as one of many first staff and have labored in clear power and environmental planning for over a decade. Yearly, my colleagues and I meet hundreds of house owners who’re to be taught extra about Dandelion and our geothermal heating and cooling expertise.
I can record instance after instance of geothermal (“geo”) success tales. That mentioned, it’s equally essential I clarify why some installations go mistaken and the way our method at Dandelion ensures we keep away from the commonest geothermal set up errors.
5 Frequent Geothermal Set up Errors
Geothermal System Design
For many years, widespread follow across the design and set up of typical, fuel-burning heating techniques has been to find out what a constructing seemingly wants after which oversize it. The tenet of that method is, primarily, an excessive amount of is best than too little. And, whereas that method might hold you heat, it’s additionally costly, wasteful and unsustainable.
Geothermal techniques work in another way and should be engineered exactly to take a seat squarely within the Goldilocks Zone of “good” to make sure environment friendly operation, a really comfy conditioned surroundings, and a good 20-25 12 months life-span for the warmth pump.
To get it “good,” we spend hours gathering and assessing information concerning the house. A number of the key particulars concerning the house we should take into account embrace the whole sq. footage, insulation R-values, the categories and variety of home windows and doorways, constructing building supplies, ceiling heights, and the record goes on….
Assessing these particulars is what permits us to find out the thermal alternate price between the conditioned house indoors and the unconditioned house open air — we name the outcomes of this evaluation “heating and cooling load calculations.” With correct information assortment and calculations, we will dimension the geo system’s warmth pump and floor loop with precision to make sure the system successfully and effectively retains up with the demand for a cushty surroundings inside your own home.
Sizing and Designing Ductwork for Geothermal
Dandelion geo techniques depend on forced-air distribution for heating and cooling, and subsequently require ductwork to push conditioned air from the warmth pump into every room of the house. The standard of the ductwork and its skill to help the airflow necessities of the geo system are essential issues. Major causes that the geo system might inadequately distribute conditioned air all through the house embrace ductwork that’s undersized or outsized; too few provide or return branches and vents; ductwork that’s poorly insulated and/or leaky on the seams; airflow constriction because of poor routing paths or mud and particles within the ductwork, or filters which are clogged and should be modified. Calculating the required airflow to every room is a part of the design course of, and ensuring the ductwork can help that airflow initially and ongoing is crucial to correct system efficiency.
Contemplating Native Local weather
The local weather of any given area varies because of modifications in latitude and a spread of geographic options, and these local weather variations should be thought-about when matching a geo system to the native surroundings. The Worldwide Code Council has developed the Worldwide Power Conservation Code Local weather Zone Map which characterizes every County all through america by a definite set of “local weather zone” traits corresponding to temperature and precipitation extremes and norms. A transparent sense of the temperature extremes the geo system should be designed to accommodate is significant to correct system perform and effectivity. As a baseline, the Dandelion crew references local weather zone traits in addition to information from regional climate assortment facilities through the design course of.
System Management Malfunctions
Though geo heating and cooling depends on considerably elementary scientific ideas and mechanics, a set of fairly complicated mechanical and electrical gadgets and software program controls are in play to function and alter the system. If the management mechanisms are faltering or fall out of adjustment, the geo system has potential to function at subpar ranges and even shut down altogether. As soon as recognized, management points can sometimes be addressed shortly and the geo system left to renew correct perform. To sweeten the pot, Dandelion geo techniques embrace monitoring sensors that ship our technicians efficiency stats each few seconds and can assist to cut back down-time by setting off dashboard alerts when a system part or management requires service.
Discovering the proper installer is crucial to a geothermal system that works as anticipated and promised.
How Dandelion Will get Geothermal Proper
At Dandelion, we make sure that we get the information factors and design proper with a crew of expert people who’re properly skilled and totally dedicated to geothermal heating and cooling techniques and solely geothermal heating and cooling techniques. We do that with a well-defined — albeit constantly evolving — course of for information assortment and evaluation, system design, set up and upkeep.
Dandelion gives a guaranty on tools, labor and workmanship, plus we monitor system efficiency. If a Dandelion geothermal system isn’t working correctly, not solely are we alerted to that reality by way of our monitoring gadgets, however we’re obliged to handle the problems in accordance with the phrases of our guarantee.
Maybe most significantly, Dandelion’s mission is to make geothermal out there and inexpensive for everybody. Provided that we plan to be round lengthy sufficient to perform the total potential of our mission, we have now no selection however to show to our prospects — previous, current, future — that our assurances and outcomes are one and the identical.
