Lyndenjn Wrote:
Short of me reading all 1300 posts, is there a post that details how someone may have taken a used whole house size A/C unit and converted it to a water to air furnace and A/C unit.
Short answere: Yes, I did it. You can do it as well and all the information you need to have to be successful is here, but you still have to study. Building your own from junk is not like buying a kit to assemble.
The ultimate goal is to reduce the cost to stay warm and cool. To do this the correct size or BTU rating must be met for both the heat-pump and loop field.
The first order of business is to insulate and seal the house like crazy. If the wind blows through your home your GSHP creation will need to be large, run often and no savings will be seen. The home improvments alone increase the value of the home. So this is money and time well spent. New windows doors etc. any approaching 25 yrs old could use an up-grade. Insulation, there are so many nice products avalible now. Maybe the exterior of the house could be updated. Dated siding can be replaced and complete sheets of rigid foam be used beneth to completely blanket and seal the structure. All this can be DIY.
Next is the loop field large enough or just a little larger but don't go crazy here because again it could get expensive unless you have escavating equipment or a friend of a friend that does . Too small and you will not get enough heat to do the job. A good loop field is very nessisary and not cheap.
Horror stories here are loop fields buried only 2 ft deep and being too small having a heat-pump run continuously and the house getting really cold and the electric bill being huge.
Lets face it. You what is to access the greatest amount of heat, expend the lest amount of energy to move it into your home and keep it there. Simple.
My shop where I had built my own GSHP unit is from a 3.5ton AC recycled unit. with a 4 ton loop field. I'm very pleased with the performance. It both heats and cools the shop. I think this past winter I heated it with about $350.00 worth of electricity compared to $2800.00 of furnace oil. There are still some improvements to make. Additional insulation to the ceiling a better insulated entrance door and the icing on the cake would be to replace the original un-insulated concrete floor with an insulated heated concrete floor.
Yes building your own system can be done and relitively inexpensive. But best results is the culmination of good systems.
Randen
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