it says either Stage 1, and Stage 1&2 all of the time (it also does the blinking 1&2, which means it's calling for electrical backup, but we've disabled that). It's turned off for a few minutes only over the past few days. It's also been a cold snap here for the last week so this is definitely the "cold extreme" test. I may turn the electric auxiliary back on, just to allow the system to cycle off a bit more.

I'll check what the heat is coming out of the vents once I get home.

when system running on stage 1, my vents are all 85-87F.

Strange. It almost sounds like two different systems. Mine only reads 80-82F from the vents in stage 1 and yet mine doesn't go to stage 1 & 2 during the day at all. My house is 3500 sq.ft. which includes a fully finished basement heated by a 3 ton Envision with a horizontal closed loop.

I think I read you were around Ottawa? I am only 3 hours east so I don't think our outside temps will be that different. I don't know except what is happening here but I think your system is running too hard and maybe you should look into something not being right. You may want to read your hydro meter because all this stage 1 & 2 is probably using alot of hydro.

BTW, the reason I thought stage 1 & 2 meant aux heat was because I had asked the installer a question about it and his answer was that he didn't think I would go above stage 1 very often so I shouldn't worry about aux heat kicking in. I was worried because he only put in 600 feet of pipe and every thing I had read said he should have put in at least 1200 feet. But so far he has been correct.

the installer came back and fixed the 'buzzing' problem -- the desuperheater thingy that heats the water for my water tank is essentially a hard copper line that runs from the heat pump to the water tank on the other side of the room. The copper pipe was anchored to the ceiling joists. It was basically taking the vibrations from the heat pump and sending them right to my floor! The pipe isn't anchored to the ceiling joists anymore, and it's *much* quieter now :)

Is your system a 3 stage (2 stages with ground loop, and the 3rd stage is ground loop + aux electric)? Over the past 2 days, it's been using Stage 1 pretty much all the time, maybe clicking off for 10 minutes at one point.

Diagnostics today (coolant temps, pressure, air temps) showed the system is running fine. The thermostat is set so that the temp differential is very small before the system turns on, so this might be why mine is on all the time. I'll let 'er go for another week and see. Supposed to get pretty cold this weekend, so it will be a good test!

Overall, can't complain. Now that I've reduced the buzzing, the house is nice and toasty. Sure beats oil heat!

I have a question, does anyone with geothermal setback the thermostat at night. I am getting a system installed this spring and I am afraid of having the electric back up heat eat up what ever savings I would have from setting back the stat at night.

The stages configuration is more a function of the design choices from the manufacturer. For instance, mine is set to cycle through all of the wells in succession in an attempt to warm the house. First 1, then 3, then 1 and 3, then 1,2 and 3 and if that is not enough, it will flip on the aux heat to keep the compressor from running too long.

Where the compressor is the most power hungry component in any heat pump short of the aux heat, it can use less power to let the aux heat come on rather than allow the compressor to run for an inordinate period of time.

rook99 -- nope, I've got mine pinned at 22C all day/night. It runs quite nicely like this!

My stages are set by temp. If I'm .3F away from my set temp, stage 1 heating kicks in. At 0.6F, stage 2 kicks in. At 1.2F, stage 2 + aux kicks in.

So how did your furnace work on the weekend Staticman? I think the lowest temp here was -17C. Mine never got out of stage 1 during the day and the meter suggests not during the night either. House temp at 73F.

I don't honestly know if my 3rd stage is ground loop + aux electric or just aux.

worked pretty well -- we dipped down to -20-something when I checked in the morning. Seems like my system keeps flipping between stage 1 and 2 all day and night (no electric kicking in).

Stage 2 can get the temps up to 22C quite easily, but stage 1 can barely manage it...so the temps drop a little bit until stage 2 kicks in again. (edit: my house is 2x4 construction with lots of windows, so I know it's not the most efficient regarding heat loss!)

I kind of wish stage 2 would stay ON until the desired temperature is reached. From what I understand, stage 2 works until it's .3F away from the setpoint, and that's when stage 1 kicks in. If stage 1 can't keep up, then the system will never shut off.

(although, Jan/Feb are the coldest months in the year so I suspect my system will cycle more regularly once it warms up just a bit)

It may be too early, but can some of you do a post installation review of your payback and see if it is on track?

TIA

Howdy:
Posted awhile back about doing the installation.
Well it is in and there is some tweaking to be done but they are about 95% done.
I did a Blog (http://www.banooner.com/blog/) about it and I am continuing to update it.


Enjoy.

great blog. I enjoyed viewing it. Thanks.

worked pretty well -- we dipped down to -20-something when I checked in the morning. Seems like my system keeps flipping between stage 1 and 2 all day and night (no electric kicking in).

Stage 2 can get the temps up to 22C quite easily, but stage 1 can barely manage it...so the temps drop a little bit until stage 2 kicks in again. (edit: my house is 2x4 construction with lots of windows, so I know it's not the most efficient regarding heat loss!)

I kind of wish stage 2 would stay ON until the desired temperature is reached. From what I understand, stage 2 works until it's .3F away from the setpoint, and that's when stage 1 kicks in. If stage 1 can't keep up, then the system will never shut off.

(although, Jan/Feb are the coldest months in the year so I suspect my system will cycle more regularly once it warms up just a bit)
Second year seemed to work a little better than the first, I think because the dirt settled but don't know if it would be the same for a vertical installation. Also with horizontal, the loop temp goes down as the winter goes on so it takes more effort to heat. I think it is the same for AC and late in the summer. My furnace will start staying on longer in stage 1 and will go into stage 1 & 2 more often.

I think my thermostat can be set for when we want stage 1 & 2 to come on. Tell it to try stage 1 for 30 min and then kick into stage 1 & 2 if temp was not reached. Maybe the opposite can be set too but I don't know.

Payback is ahead of prediction mostly because of the savings on hot water. Best thing we could have done. Just wish we could have waited a few months.

I just found this thread a couple of weeks ago and it has taken me that long to read through it as I have been rather busy lately. I have several observations and comments as I installed a GSHP system in my home about 15 months ago. I have been putting together a webspace about it, that will be active in the next few days, with plenty of pictures and I will post a link when it is ready. Not quite the blog that Liverdude has done but my overall experience is not all that different. Nice job, by the way, Liverdude!

My 1500sqft bi-level home is just 5yrs old and my energy audit rating went from a 77 to an 85, largely due to closing off the combustion air intake and decomisioning/sealing of the chimney. My unit is a Northern Heat Pump 6Ton Xterra 'Special' model(special because of the 'dual stage' compressor). I have 5x 200' deep vertical 'loops' connected in a reverse return parallel arrangement closed system. I will post some temperature data on the webspace as I don't have it all in front of me right now. A recent question was 'does anyone set the thermostat back at night'. My system functions very much like a conventional forced air furnace(what was originally installed) in that I do set it back at night. I usually have the Tstat set for 20+(High side of 20 as there are two 'beep' settings that say 20degrees celcius) and 17 at night. The system cycles on and off about every 20-40 minutes depending on outside temperatures, just as the NG furnace did.

The unit has a Dual stage compressor with Aux Electric and an ECM blower motor. As others have described, it starts on Stage 1 and will add Stage 2 after a given time (based on temp change and call demand) and, in the unlikely event, add Stage 3 as a last resort if the temp isn't rising quickly enough. I have never had Stage 3 cut in other than for testing purposes. Stage 1 produces duct temps of 34C when calling for room temp of 20C. Stage 2 only ever comes on first thing in the morning when the temperature is reset to the usual daytime setting of 20C from the overnight 17C. This takes about 40 minutes or so to heat up and then cycles less and less frequently as the day warms up. The Aux heat was not connected originally but I came home after a weekend away, about a month after the installation was activated, to find it had 'shut down' and the house was down to only 7C. I hooked up the Aux electric after that and it hasn't been needed since, touch wood. It is there for just such a case, an 'emergency'. The system had 'tripped off' for a loop flow fault(probably an air bubble).

My unit does both air and water heating as I use it for heating my 26'x28' garage with in-floor hydronic piping and plan to heat my basement the same way, someday. My original 'quote' was for $18,000 but given some changes, Tankless On-Demand Hot Water Heater, garage floor piping, circulator, buffer tank and so forth, the final tally was just over $34,000, not including my labour and a rather extensive list of parts and supplies. I am still waiting for a cheque for just over $4000 in rebates from NRCan that should arrive any day.

I also have supplemental hot water from the desuperheater but have found that I really don't benefit that much from preheating as I did away with the NG Tank heater in favour of an on-demand tankless unit. I still have the old tank connected to water but it is not connected to the gas supply. My NG bill now consists of about $26/mo of connection fees and a 1cubic meter consumption every 3 months or so. (I live alone and spend most weekends at my girlfriend's so not a typical household for consumption) I am still calculating the monthly costs as Enmax(local utility provider) can't seem to send a regular monthly bill, for some reason or another, making it hard to do the simple math.

I grew up in BC but have been in Alberta now since about 2000. Electic BB heaters is what I was used to as there is no real NG distribution system in the province due in part to the mountainous terrain and rather sparse settelment. The home I grew up in had electric hot water too. Some years ago, BCHydro offered a program(can't remember the name of it) where you could get your electicity for heating at a lower rate if you installed a second meter and paid to have your electric heating isolated to this second meter. We had installed a wood heating stove in the basement of our house as heating was starting to cost a lot but once this program came out, my parents jumped at it. They gave up on the wood stove and all the hassle of getting firewood each year. I don't remember what the exact costs were for heating back then but that program made it very worth while for my aging parents. BC has an abundance of water recsources and Hydro Electricity so costs have always been 'reasonable' but everything is relative. Prices always go up over time.

The air conditioning my GSHP system provides is a shear bonus. I was very surprised to find out how much water there is in the air in this otherwise 'dry' climate of Alberta last summer(5 gal in 2-3 days). The first time the A/C came on, it created a 'block of ice' on the heat exchanger. This was due in part to my letting the house get very hot before turning on the system, like que3jxp reported. I also discovered that the ECM fan motor programming needs some tweaking to help 'defrost' the exchanger between cycles(it needs to be programmed for an 'after run' when in cooling mode). I will be getting that done this spring before the cooling season comes around again. As a short term fix, I set the fan to 'ON' and this kept the air moving over the coils and would effectively 'defrost' them between calls for cooling.

Maintenance is next to none. The air filter is washable and there is a 'run-time' alarm on the Tstat that reminds me when to clean it. There is no fan belt to check or change as the ECM is direct drive. I'm a 'gadget guy' and have several ideas for projects to 'improve' the fault indications and provide local control and operating mode information at the main unit, for testing and troubleshooting purposes, but I suspect I may just be wasting my time as the system seems fairly rubust and bulletproof. Other than the single 'trip off' mentioned above, I have had no problems with the system in the time since it was commissioned.

6Tonnes might seem high but my contractor wanted to be sure I had no issues heating my garage to at least 20C. I have never heated it to that temp yet as I find having the water temp set at 15C makes the floor warm enough that any amount of physical effort while working out there will raise a sweat as I am usually dressed for cool winter weather anyway. The wall thermometer reads anywhere from 10C down to 3C(when it is -30 outside) so I think this is perfect for me. I have the circulator pump running 24/7 at the moment but do plan to install a slab themostat. The buffer tank calls for heat once every 40 minutes and the heat pump only runs for 3 minutes to bring the tank up to 15C from 12C. This typically happens after a house heating cycle so the unit simply switches from Stage 1 in 'water to air' mode to Stage 2 in 'water to water' mode. I have ideas for a computer control system to ensure this occurs to reduce cycle count but so far things seem to be working out all on thier own. I have to add that I simply LOVE the in-floor radiant heat as it is SILENT heat out there. Also, there is no need for a fan to blow dust around either.

There are probably several other things I should mention but this post is more than long enough already(Sorry:(). If I can answer any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Maybe give me until next week to get my webspace active and you might find the answer there first but if you don't, I would be happy to answer any questions I can.

Jet: thanks for posting your experience. It is very informative. Lokking forward to see your pictures, etc.

Good info Jet and thanks for the thanks and glad you enjoyed the blog.
I don't have as much knowledge on the subject as you but over time I hope to know as much as possible about it and learn a little bit more everyday.

I look forward to seeing your info online.

Thanks guys.

Here is the site I have set up:

http://mygshpproject.shawwebspace.ca/

It's mostly pics right now but I will add info and links as I find time.

Cheers

Two things:

I mis-quoted myself with my overnight setback temp. I only drop it to 18C, not 17(brainfart) and;

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Liverdude, but everything I know about this topic I learned from the internet or talking with people who know what they are talking about. Like you, I learn more each day.

Cheers

Jetranger how is it that you can access the back of the property for drilling? It looks like an access road?

My property has a back lane or alley. Some of the new neighbourhoods still have them and, personally, I would never buy a property without an alley. I really hate the rows and rows of garages with attached houses behind them that line most of the new streets now.