Group, I'm having similiar problems pushing 189 kw per day or 5800per month. here are my specs 4000 sq ft ranch house with geo forced air 3000 sq ft basement with infloor geo heat I have 2 five ton hydron systems for the house. I'm told one is dedicated to the upstairs and one is two the infloor in the downstairs but both can support one another if neccessary. my usage in Dec was 6680 and I've recorded my water heater usage at about 700-800 per month which is on my same heat panel. In OCT i shut off my geo units and the heat panel registgered 800 for the month from the water heater which is the only other draw on the panel. I've had the contractor out several times and they came out today and ran a heat test and the ground water coming in was 43 degrees. I forgot to mention that I havev 12 horizontal loops that are about 100 feet or longer each. So, I think I have plenty of capacity but for some reason my system is running constantly. I also have a humidifier system that was set at 40% and when humidity is required it kicks on the fan on the geo system. Today they changed a setting that the heat strips will not come on unless both 5 ton systems are calling for heat. Thoughts? Attached is my graph of usage per month which does include the 800kw per month waterheater.
high electricity bill- too much kw usage Group, I'm having similiar problems pushing 189 kw per day or 5800per month. here are my specs 4000 sq ft ranch house with geo forced air 3000 sq ft basement with infloor geo heat I have 2 five ton hydron systems for the house. I'm told one is dedicated to the upstairs and one is two the infloor in the downstairs but both can support one another if neccessary. my usage in Dec was 6680 and I've recorded my water heater usage at about 700-800 per month which is on my same heat panel. In OCT i shut off my geo units and the heat panel registgered 800 for the month from the water heater which is the only other draw on the panel. I've had the contractor out several times and they came out today and ran a heat test and the ground water coming in was 43 degrees. I forgot to mention that I havev 12 horizontal loops that are about 100 feet or longer each. So, I think I have plenty of capacity but for some reason my system is running constantly. I also have a humidifier system that was set at 40% and when humidity is required it kicks on the fan on the geo system. Today they changed a setting that the heat strips will not come on unless both 5 ton systems are calling for heat. My ration in Nov and Dec of Kw usage per HDD was about 4. Thoughts? Attached is my graph of usage per month which does include the 800kw per month waterheaters.
My thoughts are that you either have a poorly insulated house or an unfortuanately designed system. 10 tons for 4,000 SF is an awful lot this side of Santa's house. To help we would need some design info most particularly the heat loss calculations. good luck, joe
I am having a similar issue with a 6 ton unit--two 3's. Long story that is posted in my own thread but have found in the last couple of days that one of many issues is that the strip heat has been on full bore on one of the units since heating started. Stat hasn't shown strip on except when the stat calls for it. Maybe their resetting when aux heat is called will help.
Joe, I read that as 10 tons for 7,000 square feet..... 4,000 for the house and 3,000 for the basement. I'm not surprised he's using 5800 kw/month to heat 7,000 square feet. OP, If I'm wrong please correct me.
Let me clarrify my heating space: 4000 sq ft on the main floor heated with geo forced air (12-18ft ceilings) 3000 in the basement heated with hydronic infloor heat 1500 sq ft shop with hydronic infloor heat as well- thermostat set at 60degree in this area. total heated area is 8500
Wow BIG house I don’t know where you live but try comparing HDD to KWH and see if your usage seems reasonable compared to November. One thing to consider if you are operating near design temperatures there may be nothing wrong with your Geo units. Total 6680KWH - DHW 800KWH = Heating 5880KWH/month 5880 KWH/month / 10KWH/hour (best guess of what 2 5 ton units would consume) =588 hours/month 588H/M/ 31 days = 19 hours of operation per day with no Aux heat. For me December was very cold, my unit would run for 20+ hours a day mostly in second stage. (glad it's only 2 ton) You can check me on the 10KWH with your data sheets but that looked reasonable from some that I looked at. Good Luck.
2,5 I hope you are not in Ohio, or even close to Valley City, Ohio. Your location might help us fix what is wrong. I started as a scorched air guy so I know how that works. I now know hydronic is better and cheaper, but I think you are under sized. More input is needed.
more info on my electrical usage here is the info on usage and hdd and cdd info for my place not sure what it means.
Not enough data I like to plot my AVG daily KWH to AVG daily HDD. You can then add a trend line and use the slope to get KW per HDD. Once you have good data you can compare at any daily usage to see if your system is operating correctly. The problem for you is you only have 2 data points and 1 if not both are suspect. Sorry no help from this angle. I'm still not sure that your system is using more than it should but I will leave that to the experts.
I'm not quite that bad at math..... We do not tend to count basement squares in our area toward square feet. Nor does a 3,000 SF basement add much to the load (perhaps 20% of the 4000SF ground floor load). Your introduction of the additional shop load is interesting, but I am still not convinced you are undersized or over paying. Share the man J loss calcs with us and we'll know. Everything is speculation without this information. joe
loss calculations I'm trying to get these from my heating guy. I hope to send them today. I did notice that last night at 10 it was about 1 degrees outside and my aux heat strips did not kick on yet and the units where still holding temp. Surprised to see this. more info coming soon. Thanks in advance for all of your help ;thus far.
