How low can you (I) go? Water Flow that is

By all means if you are not paying to pump it more can be better.

 

I do have to pump it. Flowing wells produce a lot of volume but no pressure. I was told to go air to air as it is close to same efficiencies with a propane furnace for colder than 25 deg. I think since I am not wasting water geo might be a better way to go again. Just have to clean it in the off season. No hot water this time.

 

In New Brunswick, Canada, there is not too much heat in the air at certain times of the year. Mini Splits have made great improvements since they went variable speed, but being up north and having a whole house to heat still favors geo and a central distribution system. What is the issue, you can pop in a new heatpump and call it a day? Should be on par with air source, since the work on the well should be minimal.

 

My main issue would be losing efficiency or the heat exchanger going bad from hard water. I do already have the open loop in place and really don't want to dig up the yard with a closed loop and add that cost to it. Is there a good way to clean out the exchanger during the summer. Does the cupro nickel coils work well? After getting on this site I think I want to stay geo, I am doing a lot of shopping right now.

 

CU-Ni works very well, but we have quite good water here, so it is hard to judge for your neck of the woods. On the other hand, it looks like that even a Cu heatexchanger worked well for you for many years, correct?

 

I guess it did. I bought a geospring water heater by Ge. It will have softened water going to it. My electric bills run $100 a month here not using any heat or air, but did have geo hot water. Is there any tricks like magnets to help the water not rust my geo? I am sure they are gimmicks but curious if anything was recommended?

 

I have done this system before.

It does not take much digging.

We took a sort of developed spring and piped the flow in and out of a poly septic vault. The flow was about 24 GPM. We filled the septic tank with 300' of loop per ton. We installed a radiant floor manifold, as the geo folks had not learned flow yet, and took the home run to the house.

You could import clean water as we did to the loops and let the bad water make the heat exchange.

I have photos if they would help you see how this might work for you.

Mark

 

That makes sense. How big of a tank? I do flow 80-100 gpm. So you suggest for a 3 ton about 1000' of tubing in a poly tank, closed loop to my furnace with antifreeze I suppose? My flow would run thru the tank to warm the tubing. What does tubing and a tank run?

 

Hold on now often the Iron around mid MI has little consequence at all to a geo. The drains downstream of a solenoid may foul, but I have had customers get 25 years out of a system with no flush.

 

You might NOT have to pump it - some geo heat pump heat exchangers work off just 2-3 psi across the heat exchanger, possibly within the pressure available from a flowing well. My own flowing well has 9 psig of static head and I run it though my 3 ton WaterFurnace Envision and then 150' of 3/4" garden hose to distribute the water to various plants and trees for irrigation. Sometimes I put it in a 600 gallon kiddie pool, but I have to substantially throttle it to get it down to 2-3 GPM so as to warm the water to 85-90 in summer.

I would urge you to use such a water resource responsibly, drawing no more from it than necessary for a 10-20 degree water temperature rise or fall, depending on season.