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Driftless SW Wisconsin | Has anyone ever tied in an outdoor wood furnace into a geothermal loop? I know you still need electric or gas backup but can you still maybe tee in a wood furnace? Thanks. Jim at Dawn
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| ours has not gone to "backup" in three years
insulate and don't worry about the "backup" |
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Dallas Center IA 515-720-2463 | Jim, Do you mean to give the Geo water a boast in heat. In so doing the Geo unit would work better in cold weather.
I sure have given it a lot of thinking time.
But I doubt if it would put out any more heat than just using the hot water to direct heat.
My sister and brother have both went Geo, and both are very happy.
Sister went from winter heating oil costs of close to $1000- a month, to a electric bill that is less than $1000- higher for the entire year.
And with last spring remodel the costs now will be lower.
I talked both of them into Geo. Brother felt it would be the thing, but didn't know about the cost.
Sister put it in, fall of 08. Brother spring of 09.
I have to build a new house to do it.
Added much later:
My idea is a shop. Ground water Geo for forced air heat and also air conditoning in summer. Nothing like a cool place to spent those summer days.
And a corn burning boiler for hot water in the floor.
After the hot water has made it's trip thru the floor it would pass thru a heat exchanger where it would give the geo-water a boast in heat.
This would be after the geo-water has made it's trip thru the ground. Even thou the geo-water has just been warmed up in the ground, it should be considerably cooler than the floor water that has made it's trip thru the floor.
Pretty sure it would work. Would it work better than keeping the two systems seperate? Don't know.
I do know it would cost a lot of money.
Another idea I had was during the summer hot times to run ground water thru the floor heat system. My thinking here was ground water would be about 65º or so during the summer. This 65º water would cool the concrete floor, making the whole shop quite a bit cooler.
A long time mechicalal contractor said - Yes it will cool the floor, but the cool floor would sweat very bad from condensesation. A very slick floor that you would not want to walk on.
But if there was also air conditioning running would that take care of the condensesion on the floor problem?
Edited by Bobby Greif 4/17/2010 08:26
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Embarrass WI | I would think the way to make it work would be to use the wood heat as a primary heat source and the geo as a backup. The wood fire has to be kept going anyway, may as well use as much of it as possible and run the geo when necessary. My opinion-forget the woodburner. If you have extra wood, sell it or give it away. Take the money you would spend on an outdoor burner and put it toward a geothermal system. |
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central - east central Minnesota - | Tim in WI - 4/17/2010 05:49 I would think the way to make it work would be to use the wood heat as a primary heat source and the geo as a backup. The wood fire has to be kept going anyway, may as well use as much of it as possible and run the geo when necessary. My opinion-forget the woodburner. If you have extra wood, sell it or give it away. Take the money you would spend on an outdoor burner and put it toward a geothermal system. I would agree with Tim . . . If you have 2 systems, keep them seperate. Geo would need to run to release the heat, so why not just use the heat directly from the wood furnace? Then the geo would not need to run and there would be a saveing from the compressor not useing electric. If you don't have the wood furnance, as Tim suggest, a properly sized geo furnance and loop field will be a better investment and return then buying both. (there's still a hufty tax credit - 30% for qualifing geo systems). My daughters and SIL's new home never had the back up electric plemun heater kick on this past winter. The loop system should continue to become more effecent as time goes on (ground settles tighter around the loops). So I feel they could have saved the money and left the plemun heat out. If you want to tie the two systems together, I'd consider doing it in the plemun . . . .
Edited by iseedit 4/17/2010 10:21
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Wolcottville,Indiana | Hi Jim, With geo system under pressure with methonal I won't concider it, I have a geothermal with a full wood coal backup that has not been used in years. If the boiler eats a hole in the line your sol in the middle of winter until its repaired and hope metal peices do not plug the megatic pump on the geo.
My one Ct, Chuck |
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Driftless SW Wisconsin | Thank you for all the useful information. The reason I ask is to maybe give the geothermal a kick in the middle of the WI winter as Bobby was thinking. I have wood coming out of my ears but don't want to rely on the wood furnace with my schedule. The message I hear is to keep the two systems separate. Or just use the geo. Very useful information. Thanks again. Jim at Dawn
Edited by Jim 4/17/2010 17:26
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Northeast Indiana (Auburn) | My question would be why do you want to spend $10,000 for an outdoor wood furnace that you have to feed with $150 a cord wood? There is no such thing as free firewood. I can heat and cool my house for under $750 a year for electricity. I would feel a bit uneasy about heating loop water to 150 degrees. The only time the geo would work would be when the wood furnace was not running. |
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| OOPs forgot about the "here" thing
But what they told me when ours was put in the science "engineering"
in the Geo is made to work with the water temp of the ground
feeding the Geo system with a temp out of its engineered temp
would cause it not to work efficient
I was going to try and solar heated water
I think if the wood heated water was ran through the loop field to keep the GEO field
water warmer ,bump it to the temp off well water 200 feet deep
our field gets down to 35 was told it would work with 25 degree water
but would be more efficient with water at 45 to 50
don't think I can get ground water to 50
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Geothermal and outdoor wood furnace question
