Category: Miscellaneous

Geothermal Running Rates

I’m getting code together to scrape the Symphony data into OpenHAB. In the interim, we’re watching the stats from the WaterFurnace Symphony web site. We’re running between 1,800 watts and 2,800 Watts to keep the house really warm (72 degrees at the thermostat) with outdoor temps in the 20’s. The loop temperature has stayed pretty consistent as well. It’s not cheap, per se, to heat 4k square feet; but this is a lot better than the power usage with the air exchange heat pump at similar temperatures.

Adjustments

We’d been noticing rather poor airflow in the family room since we purchase the house. Asked quite a few HVAC people – basically everyone who came to quote our new system both last year and this year. The only halfway sensible answer we got was from the company that installed our geothermal system: the sales guy said there is probably a damper at the trunk. Which is reasonable, but there’s no access panel or anything. And why would you put an adjustment lever in an inaccessible location and have it closed off??

Now that we’ve got our unit in place and the whole house is toasty … the low airflow in the family room kind of sucks. So we put a borescope into the vent. Couldn’t see well enough to figure out what was going on. We put a bright flashlight & Elph camera into the vent & took some pictures – sure enough, there’s a metal piece halfway across the ducting right up by the trunk.

Now there’s an obvious answer (cut something), but I googled dampers behind hard surfaces / ceilings / etc. Got a lot of “cut it”, but even more “call a professional” … not quite sure what a professional is going to do that’s different (apart from possibly repairing the drywall). We tried to come up with some way to feed a flexible but stiff long something into the vent to shove the damper aside … couldn’t think of anything. So we gave up and cut drywall.

This is *not* where you should put adjustment levers — and it isn’t like the lever is on top where the drywaller didn’t realize it was there. The lever is pressed into the drywall like they had to shove on the board to get it attached.

Delusions

A friend of mine sited the The Economist/YouGov Poll December 17 – 20, 2016 – 1376 US Adults that says 58% of Trump voters agree that what is good for Donald Trump’s business is good for the country. Charles Wilson said much the same thing about General Motors back when he was the CEO/president/whatever they called him. I understand the sentiment (a rising tide and all that), but where I disagreed with the statement about GM is half of what I fear from Trump.

What’s good for the country *may* benefit GM/Trump/Whomever, but it could also harm them. And what’s good for them may or may not benefit the country. Relaxing safety regulations on construction would be good for Trump’s business and bottom line, but *really* suck for the people buried under a collapsed tower.

My other fear is that Trump made an amazing amount of money screwing over other people. He may make another amazing amount of money screwing over the country. My father-in-law says Trump is going to be a boon for the country because he screws over other countries to “our benefit” … which, viewed in a short-term and one-sided fashion could be considered awesome (to me a bit like stealing food from a homeless dude ’cause you get a little hungry on the way home from work, but I acknowledge that some people would like to benefit our country to the detriment of others). I just don’t see it as a sustainable policy, and I think history backs me up. The sun never set on the British Empire … until it did. Even if you’re not trying outright colonialism, I’ve seen enough of South and Central America to know how welcome American exploitation was — “yankees go home”, “fuera yanquis de America Latina”, etc. I remember seeing Michael Franti not long after Spearhead was touring Iraq and he said the message he got from speaking to Iraqis was “thank you for getting rid of a really horrible guy, now get the fuck out of my country!”. I don’t see countries being screwed over as particularly happy with the situation, nor do I expect them to express their discontent with sternly worded letters to the editor. And that’s REALLY bad for the country.

Geothermal Is Online!

We’ve got a functioning geothermal HVAC system running! They finished up the piping from the exterior wall to the furnace.

I was rather excited to see the containers of methanol — filling the tubes is the last step before bringing the system online. I like a nice fire … but it’s a cold way to heat your house.

The loop filling contraption – hooks up to the domestic water supply, mixes the methanol, and pumps it into the loop field. Over a hundred gallons – since we know the diameter (3/4″ in the loopfield, 1.5″ to the house) and the length (8x 200′) … we’ll calculate the volume of the cylinder some day. But for now … we’re got HEAT!!!

About as messy as a bean can be …

She managed the full Glastonbury experience without leaving home — shoes stuck in the adobe-eque mud, clay mud coating everything. We’re going to turn the geothermal dig site into Anya construction play land next year — take the toy excavator & dump truck out, make some roads, and generally get filthy.

Geothermal – Digging and Drilling

We have construction equipment! They just finished up with the previous job, and the equipment has been delivered to our property.

The geothermal system — WaterFurnace Series 7 — is installed in our house. There’s a pump mounted to the wall, but nothing is plumbed together because the loop field has not yet been installed. That’s what this equipment is for – they are going to dig a big hole in the yard (maybe 8 foot by 4 foot). A whole bunch of 3/4″ tubes will run into this hold & connect to a manifold. There’s another hole dug next to the house, and 1.5″ tube will go from the manifold to the exterior wall, through the exterior wall, through the pantry, and into the furnace room to attach to the pump.

The fluid that’s run through the loop field is run through the WaterFurnace unit, and heat is extracted into the refrigerant. And that’s what will heat our house. There are a lot of good non-technical write-ups of how geothermal heating works, but I found a decent somewhat technical write-up from a geothermal installer in Western PA.

This heat will be used to heat the house … and as long as the loop field temperature stays fairly reasonable (upper 30’s, I think), we should be able to sustain a comfortable temperature without engaging the heat strips. We’ve talked to quite a few people who use new-ish geothermal units that have only used the heat strips in extreme temperatures (it was -20 for a week a few years back) or when they increase the thermostat by more than two or three degrees. If you lower the house temperature to go away on holiday, don’t set the thermostat back to normal immediately upon returning home. Slowly increase the set-point by a degree or two every few hours a day before you plan to return – by slowly increasing the temperature, you’ll avoid using the heat strips.

Health Care Cost Comparisons

I recently happened across a cost comparison tool on my health insurance company’s web site. It isn’t something they advertise or promote … and I’m not sure why. You answer a bunch of questions (I really wish I could enter the diagnostic code for the procedure instead of navigating through questions), then you pick what service you need. It provides a list of covered providers in an area and the estimated cost of service. The difference in the cost of an MRI is HUNDREDS of dollars. I expected there to be some variance – real estate costs more in some areas than others if nothing else. But I was seeing some services – physical therapy for one – where the low price was a third of the high price.

Why isn’t this information available to everyone? Would our health care costs be reduced if people were somewhat cognizant of costs at different facilities? (Either because they’d select cheaper facilities or because the more expensive facilities would have to lower their prices or justify their exorbitant cost). I see the same kind of cost inflation in other insurance-covered verticals — car repair, dentistry, eye care. As soon as the price becomes hidden … there’s a fairly logical assumption that it’s not that much different from provider to provider. I don’t know how much a service is going to cost until it’s already been completed, the provider bills insurance, and insurance provides the explanation of benefits. Not exactly conducive to comparing costs!

There are other “not my money” situations that don’t lead to out of control costs. SNAP comes to mind – although the percentage of people buying food with SNAP may be low enough to not impact prices … I can look at grocery store fliers, decide if it’s worth the extra time and travel to hit multiple shops, and plan my meals for a week or two around what’s on sale. There might be a special price for a loyalty card holder (i.e. someone willing to trade some privacy for savings), but there aren’t a dozen different prices for different customers. And you know the price BEFORE you eat the food. Could you even imagine shopping if you only knew the price as you checked out?! And even then … you could still put it back.

Hopefully UMR’s price comparison tool becomes a common thing within the insurance industry — emergency situations may mean uninformed decisions … but if I’m going in next week for some tests, the order can be written a day or two later whilst I research the options and decide on the best value for me.