Connecticut No consiste

I guess the rule of thumb applied by the contractor is one of the reasons Deb is in trouble......Plus a old Victorian in CT is the wrong place for a rule of thumb approach over the internet without any data.

 

Here we go. Here is the first "I can fix this" statement, followed by "I can make it do what you want", followed by a phone number and an offer for services.
Without knowing specifics about pipe sizes, pressures and temperature, and other performance data.

Again, I would challenge everyone to discuss here what he/she wants to do to change the above calculated efficiency and performance numbers.

And after Mark stating that he coached Tamar for a year before she won, you should really get in contact with her and listen to her story and how she resolved it.

 

Doc:

I used to think you an ass hole. Now I am sure. What part of my offer to help displeased you?

How many water to water systems have you designed, built and know they work?

How many Unico systems have you designed and built? Not many I guess.

I wonder how Doc can know what conversations I have with whom. I bet he can tell me and the rest of the BB what I talked about with my cardio vascular surgeon.

My offer remains. I do not fear other's imagined rating of my ability.

 

Hi Everyone,

I started to measure and map out the pipes and I got called away. I will work on this again tonight and hopefully have the specifics. A couple of assumptions/facts I am reading in these comments are the temp on the Climate Masters can be as high as 120 degrees. I was told never to take it above 115. The company that has been here pretty regularly set it at 111 and I goosed it up to 115 and feared it would blow up at that temp. I also have the cool set for 44 degrees and I am not getting either floor to cool under 71 degrees which is why I started this last weekend. Last summer I had no problem establishing and maintaining it at 68 degrees.

When I spoke to Gabe at HBX about the problem on Monday, I told him I had purchased one of the guns to shoot the laser up to the openings to see what tempurature the vents are showing. It has been all over the boards depending on what room I was in all winter. I bought the gun 4 years ago and every time the house starts to feel wonky I pull it out and check!!

Gabe suggested I use the gun starting with the Climate Master and following the pipes over to the Unico looking for a drop in the temperature, trying to isolate why the house is not getting cool.

I have not had a chance to do it. This is the summer of breakage. I just ordered a new motor for the Dophin pool cleaner, of course it died just in time for the season. My younger son is out of the country and emailed me he is sick along with others in his group who have already gone to the hospital for meds. I'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon for NYC staying overnight with my other son in Brooklyn so I will be close to Newark to pick up the world traveler son at 5:00am on Thursday.

So far this spring, I have lived on YouTube and have taken apart 2 carburetors; 1) Honda lawnmower and 1) Stihl weed whacker, learned how to soder plastic and sodered the clips back on the plastic window on the front of the washing machine (twice because my son came home from college and broke it again). Now the airconditioning is not working which is just another 'gotta do' on my fast times in CT life style and one of my refrigerators stopped working (I think it is the outlet but I can't reach it until I get someone to move the unit out to test it).

So if I do not get the drawing completed tonight, please know it is not because I am being lazy.

Sincerely,
Deb

 

If you have an IR thermometer, bear in mind they do not give accurate readings when aimed at a reflective surface, like shiny copper pipes.

 

Lets keep it polite.

 

Deb,
Here is the link to a Design Guide by Climate Master that discusses using Air Coils on the Load Side of a Geothermal Water to Water system.

I cut and pasted the section on back fitting a Geothermal to replace a Boiler, if the insulation has been upgraded, which you have done.
The water temperatures supplied for heating will be lower but may work. This has been done before and like Mark, I think it will work when the problems are found and corrected. The Cooling season shouldn't be an issue for the system if it is working properly.

http://www.climatemaster.com/downloads/BR402.pdf

Bryant Geothermal Design Guide

Water To Water System Design Guide

Fan Coil Units Page 28

"In a retrofit situation when replacing a conventional boiler, care must be taken to ensure that any air handlers or fan coil units in the building will heat the building with cooler water temperatures, and will be able to handle the increased flow rates if necessary. If the insulation levels of the building are being upgraded, the existing coils may meet the lower heat loss of an upgraded building with lower water temperatures".

 

Deb,

you got a personal message. Look at the inbox on the upper right part of the screen

 

Deb,

your spirit is admirable.
Climatemaster publishes performance data for your heat with 120F Entering load water temperature into the heat pump, leaving the heat pump at about 128F. So they can obviously perform at that temperature. Now, the efficiency is certainly tanked, and your air handlers do not perform very well at that temperature. And it might affect longevity.

 

Good Evening/Morning,

I did not get to the basement. I figured out how to put a clamp around the coupling for the pool vacuum hose and finally vacuumed the pool. Pool stuff is still new to me, I am learning as I go.

It turns out because my son dumped the leaves in while taking off the cover and not having the Dolphin or knowing how to manually vacuum I have grown a significant crop of phosphorus and algae. 4 hours later the pool had its first vacuum, the filters were disgusting and I am not going to describe what all that mud looked like in the bottom of the filter tank. I've 'super shocked it' and can't wait to see if all this has done any good. It sure has wasted a ton of time.

Although the pipes may change I am going to use my old pool tubes and start to wrap the pipes. This house has had termites and carpenter ants and I don't want to make the environment a magnet for them to return with all this extra moisture. I've opened the hatch to let in air and tomorrow I am going to put a fan on the area to dry it up.

It was a drag trying to measure the circumference of the pipes while they are dripping. Every time I put the paper down it ended up getting wet and bleeding the ink. Haste makes waste so I will wait until I can dry it out and try again.

Last, I see a message telling me to go to my inbox and when I do I have no idea what I am looking for because nothing seems to be there. Will you please let me know what I am doing wrong?

I wish everyone a good night and thanks for all your consideration to my plight.

Sincerely,
Deb

 

Upper right corner on your screen, it says inbox, there is a red shield next to it if you have a message, and you should have one.

Good night

 

Deb,
Find a portable dehumidifier not in use and borrow it, or buy a used or new one and put in the basement to collect the humidity in the dehumidifier bucket. The buckets are designed to hook up a water hose to direct the bucket contents to a floor drain so you don't have to pull the bucket out and empty it.

The dehumidifier uses a compressor & Freon to cool an evaporator which condenses the humidity on the evaporator which drips into the collection bucket.
The humidity in the basement will drop reducing or stopping the condensation on the pipes.

After the pipes are insulated again you can decide whether the dehumidifier should be turned off or continue to run until the fall when humidity will drop curing the basement issue until next summer.

The last dehumidifier I bought was $50 used and it has controls to automatically turn off the dehumidifier when the moisture drops below a selected setpoint, and when the bucket is full, if the hose is not used to route the bucket water to the floor drain.

Here is a used dehumidifier on ebay as an example.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Whirlpool-A...590804?hash=item2cabf60f94:g:kkgAAOSwwE5WYfdm

The bucket is the bottom right component and you can see what looks like a circle where the water hose connects as a drain route to the floor drain. You have to punch the plastic out of the bucket connector center in order to make this work.
Make sure to buy the large dehumidifier, since I noticed there are some small ones that work by a different process.
The refrigeration type shown has a blower that will move a large amount of air through the unit removing the most moisture from the air per hour.

 

I had one installed by a plumber until the guys who came in to remediate the asbestos took it down. All the pipes in the basement were wrapped in asbestos and the guys disrupted the casings when they installed the Unico. I had the dehumidifier installed 1 year after putting in the geo and had the asbestos removed 3 years ago.

The plumber had the runoff piped into the drain above it (with a motor) where the washing machine is in the kitchen. I can't remember how it was done and I haven't had a chance to study how to do it. I am bleeding money with all these repairs which is why I can't call in a professional every time something needs attention. Just the expense of the parts are killing me. Never mind how much time all this is taking from my work. It is damned if I do and damned if I don't but mostly it is cash flow or lack there of.

 

We remotely monitor our systems so we get feedback on performance and efficiency. Especially water to water system water-water systems are sensitive to efficiency losses when they are designed to operate with high load temperatures, which are for example needed to operate hydronic fan coils.
I put unico systems in, but for A/C only, and only in retrofits, since they are inherently inefficient and drag down your system EER and COP. In those cases the annual cooling load was small enough that the lack of efficiency had only a small impact.

I don't question that the systems you have done work, I have no way to know that. But you have over and over displayed here a lack of understanding what effects the efficiency of a water to water system.

You cannot combine a water-water heat pump today with an hydronic air handler (especially unico) and run it with a good COP better than 2 in the winter. It is physically impossible.

The statement from the CM hydronic design highlights what is common knowledge in the geo design world:

"In a retrofit situation when replacing a conventional boiler, care must be taken to ensure that any air handlers or fan coil units in the building will heat the building with cooler water temperatures, and will be able to handle the increased flow rates if necessary. If the insulation levels of the building are being upgraded, the existing coils may meet the lower heat loss of an upgraded building with lower water temperatures".

In other words, get you loads down, then it may work (it did not work for Deb so far). But what they don't tell you that it will never work efficiently.

Again, I challenge everyone here to detail what he or she wants to change on Deb's system to enhance the COP. You might be able to replace the inefficient pumps, and repipe something. The impact on the system's COP can be easily calculated. But it will never overcome the inherent inefficiency of combining water-water with a hydronic fan coil.

 

Doc and Mark,

Both of you guys are valuable contributors to this forum. Rather than continuing to call each other out, why don't you call each other and talk, yell, dispute and go over your differences? ...seriously! You spend more time trying to one up and embarrass each other than it would take to hash it out off line. Maybe you might see each other in a different perspective or come up with a way you can both enjoy this forum without bothering about comments from the other. Forum posters need both of your expertise and it continues to distract when you go at each other. I know this will never happen but you spend so much time on here that it was worth a suggestion.

My 2c worth and now I look forward to getting beat up.

 

Mel,

No beat up from this part of the country at all…you are right on point as a voice of long overdue reason.

The technology and industry need as much goodwill as it (we all) can get…this type of continuing soap opera between these two Forum Leaders doesn’t lead to that end!

I would venture to even say that it is damaging to a certain extent.

Time to take it up a notch or four, gentlemen!

Regards,

IronOak

 

The way to make this system work is to add an additional water coil. Unico is all modular and the change would be DIY friendly. One could use a heating only coil and not bother with condensate pans and drains. Unico rates their chilled water coil output at 18,700 BTUH at 400 cfm. Hot water coil will output an additional 19,900 BTUH so that is 38,500 BTUH at 400 CFM using 120* water into the coils. That is more heat than the machines will make.

Anyone that can re-build a chain saw should be able to add the heating only coils.

 

Deb,
Keep an eye out for a used humidifier similar to the example on ebay (since it doesn't run all of the time) at garage sales and flea markets. Someone who needed one at a rental house may no longer need the device at their new location.

I like to buy an item once, buy it cheaply then repair it until it's time to be donated to a neighbor or turned in as scrap for cash. This results in having money to buy something else that becomes a necessity or makes life easier.

Doc & Mark,
So we figure out why the system isn't cooling now, fix the problems, like that melted temperature switch. Then plan for additional modifications in the Fall for heating improvements, like 1) adding heating coils in the Unico(s);
2) possible piping modifications; and 3) more efficient pumps to replace those that are over designed and wasting power.

The modifications should be prioritized for the best return in power savings per dollar spent, as well as based on available funds to make the mods.

My observation is that each of you see Geothermal using a different viewpoint. Doc sees the world in numbers and formulas which result in facts that can't be disputed unless a math error occurs, while Mark relies less on those formulas but has experience that allows him to arrive at the same conclusion by a different thought process.

 

So how would that change to run the system at a significantly better COP than the generously calculated current 1.69?
Still the same blower and pumping electrical usage. Still the same heat pump COP. And still the same water temp output of the heat pump. It might heat the house better, since you transfer more BTUs from the heat pumps to the house, but it will not provide any savings, since also the heat pump run time will increase. If you provide more BTUs at the same efficiency, your costs will go up too.

 

You do not listen. I have been wrong before, you could be deaf.

I care not about costs to run the system.

I am after comfort.

The machines make 36,000 each. Adding the second coil puts all the heat they make into the conditioned space. If. If. If.

I said I could fix the system, make her warm.