I've been researching direct exchange systems and have been measuring the temperatures of my concrete basement walls and floors. The floors are 6-8 feet below grade and they average 60 degrees. I'm in Seattle Washington. Even when it was the low for the year I was over 55 degrees. So the question is if I use copper tubing and make sure it is grouted or some other way thermally placed against the walls or floors and grouted to it, can I use this as my loop? I have over 150 lineal feet of concrete wall 8 feet tall and an additional 1000 square feet of concrete floor. Seems like as long as I fir these out to protect the pipe it should work? Anyone ever heard of that or have any idea?
No If heating, you are assuming your concrete will be forever at the temperature it is now. It won't. It will freeze. The btu's need to be replenished and this is the work of the sun on the ground.
What they wrote - with DX the basement floor / walls could get REALLY cold, perhaps freezing adjacent soil. Whatever you used to fur out would condense water and become yummy mold food. In summer it would get really hot in the basement - hot air would rise up out of the basement, so you'd need more cooling which would in turn heat the basement even more and then you need even more... This is not a knock on DX, just that you appear to be designing to divorce the geo from geothermal.
