geothermal (Colstrip: mortgage, environment, for sale)

[Stephan_K]

Anyone have a standing column geothermal heat pump system for their house? If so, how is it working in the MT climate with a single well and how deep is the well? Would you trade it for anything else if you had the chance?

[rickers]

There are a few houses and ranches in our valley that have hot springs but I'm not sure if anyone uses the hot water for heating the house or not. I don't know diddly about heat pumps. If I were going to build a house and I had a hot spring on the property I would definitly use the hot water for heating ! If a person has free heat and no mortgage between hunting, fishing, and a big garden who needs a frigging job !
Oh yea there is that $3.19 per gallon thing, oh well better add a donkey cart to the list !

[TechGromit]

I would have to agree with you, rickers, you don't know diddly about heat pumps. A Geothermal system extracts heat from water and uses that heat to heat your home. It has nothing to do with hot springs.

I just brought a house that has both a geothermal system and a heat pump. I have an open loop geothermal system is 17 years old and works great. It gets water from a well and then the return water is dumped outside into the yard. Unfortunately the geothermal system is only for the downstairs, the 2nd floor is heated with a heat pump, a heat pump extracts heat from the air and uses that heat to heat the house. Even air that is 30 degrees F has some heat in it and it can be extracted with a heat pump, in much the same way a geothermal system extracts the heat from water. The problem with the heat pump is the colder it gets, the less efficient the heat pump becomes because it has to work harder to extract heat out of the colder air, where as water for a Geothermal system is always a consistent temp.

I hate my heat pump with a passion, but replacing it with a geothermal unit is going to run me around 12k, money which I don't have at the moment. I wouldn't trade the geothermal for anything else, it's by far the cheapest way to heat your house.

[A Neighbor]

Our clinic in Colstrip heats and cools with geothermal wells. I don't know how many they have but it works great for them.

[Stephan_K]

Rickers........your a heat pump genius . Don't let anybody tell you any different........I need a line on that donkey cart when you find it. You pretty much described my situation to a tee.

TechGromit......how deep is your well, how deep is the water level and what is the recovery rate or it? I think today most open systems put the water back in the well. Only when the water becomes too cool or too warm to and from the well that it is dumped. I don't know for sure but am trying to figure it out.

12K for a geo unit? What kind of loops?

[rickers]

Yea well I know a bit more about heat pumps and geothermal engineering than I let on or am willing to brag about. The gromit is just a newby who wants to throw his genius in others faces ! I am willing to bet that my overall cost of maintaining a livable condition in the house heating department is way less than his without any solar or geothermal high dollar garbage. I heat with wood and very low cost electrical power. I wrote the frigging book on living on the cheep. I lived on a boat with solar panels and in very small and humble land quarters quite comfortably for most of my 56 years and I suspect that the carbon footprint of a techie with lots of money invested in an eco friendly but large house is in reality trashing the environment much more than a guy living in a small boat, cabin or motor home no matter where the energy comes from ! I have been driving the same mini pick up for 13 years and it has almost 350,000 miles on it. I paid $5000 for it and expect to be driving it for many more years. Heat pumps may save a bit of energy but at what cost. Must be nice to have a house big enough to warrant paying that kind of money to save a few bucks. Yea I don't know diddly about heat pumps but I do know that for most folks in western Montana they aren't the answer to a lower cost of living considering the cost of installation, maintenance and eventual replacement.
P.S, Mr. Gromit, condescending quips are not becoming of a newby !

[Stephan_K]

Rickers, I'm sure TechGromit's post was not meant to intentionally offend or attack you. Lets all fight nice now

I am very interested in your methods of living on the cheap. I would like to compare notes with you on some things. I have a cabin in the mountains of Western PA and live very similarly to you when there. It is a second home for me and my family and it is very nice, small and humble quarters as well as you put it. It is a real pain acquiring and preparing wood for heating. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just pay for the energy and forget it but I am not like that.

What is available wood wise for you there? Here we must find either dead trees 'close' or visit lumber mills for slabs. Then the work begins! If you purchase already split wood, you might as well pay for gas or elec as it would be much cheaper. I can't imagine it being any different there but then again I have been known to be wrong once and a while.........Yep i was only wrong 2 times last year . It was a good year for not being wrong.......

I do believe geo systems have come down in price. I am amazed to hear $12K for one. I have seen them for around $7K-$8K for average size homes (2k sq ft). Don't know the particulars of them but I think that is pretty decent considering they use about 1/2 the energy a standard gas furnace would use. Cost recovery of cheaper systems is very quick. I'm sure proportionate to a small dwelling the energy costs would be very similar or even less. I'm basing this on our way of life in NE OH too......May be different there.

[rickers]

Our wood is really easy to get here especially lodgepole pine. They die off from fires but don't get burned up. The permit for wood cutting is about $5.00 per cord with a 2 cord min charge and you can take up to 10 cords. If you're after better quality wood then it's a little harder to find. I like to find dead standing Red Fir (Douglas) and Larch. (Tamarack). Much of the time you can find green blow down after some wind. This wood really needs to cure for about a season before burning. Heck we even cook on our fireplace. I welded some 3/8" square stainless steel to make a grill that goes right over the fireplace wood grate. We let coals burn down for steaks and burgers, but hot links can be cooked in front of the fire rather than over coals. I am going to build a fireplace hearth rotisserie to slow roast large things like turkeys and roasts. It will be based on a large stainless drip pan. I just have to find a cheap gear motor. We had so many big fires last summer that there is plenty of wood for everybody in my neck of the woods. It's going to be a good spring for morel picking ! I really need to get wood soon as my stack is dwindling away fast. I'll be out by the middle of Feb and I'll just be using my elect. furnace. $$$ ! Our town won't allow any drilling of any kind of wells. Maybe they will allow a variance for a heat pump well but I doubt it. They are real skittery about wells. They don't want anyone trying to tap into the hot water at all for any reason. Our town sits over a giant pool of water underground and there are aquifers that have the hot mineral water. The powers that be here want to preserve their business and their business relys on the mineral water and they wont have anyone else sucking it out from under them !

[Stephan_K]

That is awesome that you can cook with your fireplace. And a rotisserie, I think my wife would have a fit if I did something like that. I'd make her clean everything .........hey, better go get that free peacock, it will be a good trial run for it . I love it! Do you have a good screen around that fireplace? I think I'd be pretty nervous much of the time with something so open and being a main heat source too. Ever have any problems?

How much wood do you go through each year and how big is your home? Doesn't sound like there are many hard woods for burning there. Here we have nothing but good hard wood. Maple, Oak, Hickory, Cherry....not too much pine. Plus pines are pretty bad for the creosote. Those burning pine a lot around here tend to have quite a few flu fires. How do you deal with all the creosote?

I don't think pounding holes in the ground or disturbing the earth would be a very good idea with hot springs around the area either. That would do nothing but ask for trouble with contamination and all the bad stuff that many humans are good for bringing to everything. I don't blame the powers that be one bit for that and commend them for doing it. Just another step for preservation.......

[rickers]

We keep the screens open when we are sitting in the front room other times we close it. When we leave the house we close the glass doors if there is still any fire left but we usually let it go out before we go to town or wherever. Our place is about 18x80 and we go through about 2 cords each year. We could burn more and lower the elect bill a bit more but I really don't want to chop anymore than I already am ! We will install a wood cook stove and a small Franklin fireplace when our rich uncle gets out of the poorhouse or when we win the lottery ! We have friends who lived on a relatives ranch here as caretakers and they really blew it . The ranch has a bunch of greenhouses and a hot gushing spring to water plants and heat the greenhouses year round. They tried to raise some flowers for sale but they let most of them die. Then they got into trouble with the law messing around with substances and with children involved the law wasn't very easy on them. Now they have to work real jobs and be responsible and that's good but they lost the opportunity to live free on the hot house ranch. If they weren't so flaky they really could have had a nice agricultural enterprise going, oh well ! Sure must be nice to have property with hot springs on it.