02-16-18, 02:16 AM | #27 | |
Supreme EcoRenovator
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Portland, OR
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Quote:
My lot size is very small, so I could only drill down. Sounds like you have more property and trenches would be easier to do. After I did mine I happened to look at the cost to rent equipment for digging serious trenches, and it was not so bad. Also consider what the frost line is in your area, very important. Vlad built an amazing drilling machine that totally kicked ***. If you think you might want to do this, I can give you some general information. Vlad is a very unusual guy with lots of skills. He drilled 50 foot holes I believe. Renting a back hoe is way easier. Regarding my pipe fusing tool, it worked very well. I used it to weld 'butt joints', where two molten pipe faces are welded directly together. A little practice and experimentation is called for. I would caution you that in my method, I made all of my 'U-Turns" at the bottom of the hole with three butt welds each. I had sixteen holes, plus a few extra welds. All together that was a lot of welds. Each weld had a bit of 'roll' inside the pipe, which causes some amount of friction. If you over-heat the pipe face, and use lots of pressure holding the two pipe faces together, the roll will be bigger (more friction). However if you practice and get just the right amount of heat & pressure you can make a good weld with very little roll. I did some testing and calculating on my loop, and the large number of butt welds cost me some friction loss. If you go for trenches, you will not encounter very many welds, so a smaller number of butt welds won't make much difference in friction. There is also another system called "Socket Welding". If you check it out, it leaves no rolled HDPE inside the pipe. Vlad bought a socket welder from ebay, and it worked for him. I borrowed it and discovered that the Heating Sockets, which are coated with Teflon, would fit and function perfectly on my little home made paddle. The cost of a pair of those sockets was not too much. Might want to look into that. Maybe rent one local. I did check out rental, and was offended by the price, so I built my paddle-welder instead. I found out about socket welding after the fact. The butt welds are very strong, the equipment is cheaper. Your choice. If you can tell me your Zip Code and the beginning and end of your worst heating month, and the therms used in that billing period, I will double check your numbers... couldn't hurt. By the way, Ecorenovator "randen" dug trenches for his very successful system. He is probably watching this thread, but if he doesn't weigh in, please contact him, he has much GSHP lore to share. He built two heat pumps, one was fairly easy, it was 2.5 Tons, the other was three-phase and 3-Tons. He had problems on the second one, in part because a pre-used compressor failed. Good luck on your project, you will have much support here. Photographs of your undertaking always helps. Best, -AC_Hacker
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I'm not an HVAC technician. In fact, I'm barely even a hacker... |
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Tags |
air conditioner, diy, gshp, heat pump, homemade |
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