Irrigation well for geothermal

[frdsuperduty]

I have an irrigation well just off of my garage.Does anyone know if this type well can be used to heat/cool my garage as in a geothermal application?

 

[Dick in Wisconsin]

Probably. Maybe. Depends on if there is enough flow available from the well. Are you going to use a ground water heat pump like a Water Furnace?

 

[frdsuperduty]

Probably.I just got the idea today and havn't discussed it with a contractor yet.I guess my concern is,does an irrigation well work.

 

[Milton Shaw]

You usually have to have two wells, one to pump out of and one to let the water go back into the ground. This keeps the well from drying up for one thing. The big questions is how good is the water, it needs to be low mineral and good enough to drink to keep from stopping up and ruining the heat exchanger in the geothermal unit. A good HVAC designer than does geothermal should be able to tell you if it will work and what it would take to get a system in. Expensive to begin with but cheaper to operate over the years.

 

[frdsuperduty]

Thanks for the imput.lets see where it goes from here.

 

[Dick in Wisconsin]

Probably.I just got the idea today and havn't discussed it with a contractor yet.I guess my concern is,does an irrigation well work.

Where do you live?

I have a geo-thermal WaterFurnace(r) GWHP in a house in NE Wisconsin that was put in about 12 years ago to replace the GWHP put in the house in 1955. It works good. The community has a municipal electric utility which has low electric rates which helps. The unit was more expensive up front than a GFA/AC set up ... and we had the entire infrastructure for the water already installed.

If you contractor has little or no experience with a GWHP then you'll be pointed in another direction.

 

[davidlee]

I thought current geo systems used a closed loop system so well water quality is not important. They use ethylene glycol (sp) in the loop.

 

[Dick in Wisconsin]

I thought current geo systems used a closed loop system so well water quality is not important. They use ethylene glycol (sp) in the loop.

Not all. I believe in lots of areas you can discharge the water onto the ground where it will percolate into the ground.

 

[volleyball]

Open loop systems are always going to be more work and not last as long. It is a lower up front cost but I don't think you will save anything over the long run. The worse your water, the shorter the life.

 

[CNGsaves]

Geothermal rookie question . . . along same lines as OP question . . . . could well water be pumped out for cooling/heating uses, and returned back to same well later ??

If all within copper or pex lines, and well was irrigation well only for yard, any problem with that ??

 

[Dick in Wisconsin]

Geothermal rookie question . . . along same lines as OP question . . . . could well water be pumped out for cooling/heating uses, and returned back to same well later ??

If all within copper or pex lines, and well was irrigation well only for yard, any problem with that ??

Good question Mr. CNG. I don't think the respective state DNRs and possibly event the EPA will let you put anything directly back into the aquifer. If you think about it long enough, if you could put something back into the aquifer, it would be pretty easy for an "accident" to contaminate the aquifer for everyone!

 

[volleyball]

they open loop into the same pond/lake. I don't see the same well as a problem water wise. The problem is that you need to keep the water separate and so you'd need two wells holes in a very large well.

 

[theoldwizard1]

You usually have to have two wells, one to pump out of and one to let the water go back into the ground.

Some designs, yes. Most designs NO !

They install 2 pipes down the well with a 180° turn "welded" at the bottom. The water in the well never touches the water in the pipe (which may or may not contain a human safe anti-freeze). The well is then typically sealed with grout.

 

[75gmck25]

My brother-in-law in ND has a system that pumps the geothermal water out of a deep well to help heat the house, and then pumps the same water from the house out to his stock tanks (for cattle) to keep them from freezing over in the winter. From there it is returned to ground, but I'm not sure whether it just goes into a leach field or another well.

Bruce

 

[toplessHO]

My brother-in-law in ND has a system that pumps the geothermal water out of a deep well to help heat the house, and then pumps the same water from the house out to his stock tanks (for cattle) to keep them from freezing over in the winter. From there it is returned to ground, but I'm not sure whether it just goes into a leach field or another well.

Bruce

excellent design
Im guessing theres a good bit of write off there too

 

[toplessHO]

another source thats of interest is municipal water.
Alot of municipalities supply reclaimed water on a separate
"irrigation" meter for very low cost per gallon.Use the energy
from this water,return it to the ground,irrigate or what ever you want.
This may be cheaper than supplying a dedicated source of water for geo thermal.

 

[Jackfre]

35 years ago I did a feasibility study for the DOE on a district heating/cooling system for Calistoga, CA. Calistoga is up in the N or the Napa Valley and if you give me a pick and shovel and a bit of time I can dig you a boiling hole. The project was administered by the Geo Heat Center at Oregon Inst. of Tech in Klamath Falls. Klamath Falls is a neat place. Everyone heats their homes with a downhole HX which is basically a hairpin of pipe inserted down into the well. We were hoping that we could do the same thing in Calistoga but the geothermal resource had to be analyzed and the CEC has the geologists in and they determined that the Cal. resource differed from KF in that it was a static "lake" of hot water. KF on the other hand has a flow gradient across the area so the resource is constantly replenished. Nothing was ever built in Calistoga. To bad, it would have worked well, but there were other problems. The geothermal water has about 10ppm of Boron. That won't hurt you or me, but 1ppm of Boron will kill a grape vine. Ka-boom! End of story.

Using a single well successfully is totally dependent upon the flow characteristic of the aquifer. You could experiment a bit with a downhole hx and a large radiator/fan set up to see how it works.

The rules for two wells is that the water has to be returned to the same aquifer. Living in CA with the drought we are in I'm really sensitive to pumping and dumping discussions. I always have been. It may be useful, but it is incredibly wasteful, imho.

I would suggest that everyone spend some time with the geo-heat centers web sites. There is just a ton of good info there.