Hello All, I have been reading a lot of posts regarding Geothermal on forums and receiving hundreds of calls from consumers and contractors so here it goes
During these hard economic times. HVAC contractors are forced to look for other revenue avenues. Unfortunately the geothermal field is taking a hard hit.Not Good in most cases Under trained contractors are jumping into this field without the knowledge or experience needed to install these systems properly. The homeowner will be the one disappointed when they do not get the savings promised. We just finished reinstalling a geothermal that was installed incorrectly. The loop field was put in by a hvac contractor and a local well driller whom has no knowledge about geothermal loops and never ever had put a system it before. The home owner was very upset when everything needed to be redone. These contractors are giving geothermal a bad name.
I am a Geothermal Contractor Northwest Geothermal Inc. In Northwest Indiana I used to sell and service furnaces about 12 years ago. We serviced geothermal systems during those years also. Well I decided to install a complete geothermal system into my new home. WOW! The saving was great and the Comfort was awesome. I was warm at a low cost. So after a full year of quality geothermal training, yes I said a full year it takes for quality training. We started installing geothermal systems only. We changed our company name to Northwest Geothermal Inc. and history was changed for the best for us it has now been over 12 years as just a geothermal sales and service company. We complete all of our own loop installations. NO sub-contractors. We have our own Drilling rig?s and backhoe?s. I am a licensed well driller also. My caution to all of you who are thinking of getting into geothermal is do your home work and lots of training. You will here about the typical 150' to 200' ground loops per ton to put into the ground. FORGET IT THERE I S NO SUCH THING AS TYPICAL. If you use this typical thinking you will fail and your loops and they will fail. no question The proper and only way to size a geothermal system for a home and ground loop is to do a manual J load no questions asked. Then put your numbers into your purchased Climate Master geothermal or other software program not some free thing you downloaded off the internet then you are on your way to success and profits. Also the other myth in my opinion is an OPEN LOOP, pump and dump; discharge system what ever you want to call it that it is more efficient to operate and saves the customer more money. Well FORGET IT 95% percent of our service work is on open loop systems. Sure lets put an open loop on the bench and operate the system and have a constant water temp run thru it. Test it, Take a reading. OK now back to reality put it in the field under size piping, very hard water conditions ,lots of iron build up, now the system has iron and other minerals build-up in the walls of the coax coil and is lined. with these issues, now you just lost efficiency! Now the home owner is calling you back 6 months later. Its coming out cold and or my electric bill is sky high because the electric emergency back-up heat strips kicked in. OH NO! Now what ! Time for a service call to clean the heat exchanger with what? No, ice maker cleaner will not work! Well let?s use harsh chemicals like muriatic acid, lime away, etc unsafe chemicals and also to mention when putting these chemicals into the unit it void's most manf. Warranty?s because when you add these chemicals the copper and cuper nickel coil. Now you just pitted the walls, Okay now your clean and the systems running and its time for you to give the home owner there bill for cleaning, What do you think there are going to say? Well I?m not trying to scare any one away from Geothermal but there is a lot of training to become a geothermal installer. My company has produced a Biodegradable Geothermal open loop cleaner called Geothermal Green Clean and it is safe for the equipment and the user with no harsh acids and it can be found at
George Kontol Jr. Northwest Geothermal Inc. Wind Power- Solar Energy-Geothermal Drilling DeMotte, In. 46310
219-987-2822-------------------------------------
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