Quote:
Originally Posted by charlesfl
I have my well drilled to 40 feet and currently designing the heat exchanger.
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charlesfl,
Congratulations on your thermal well!
Near Pensacola, are you? I lived for a short time, not too far from Fort Walton Beach, so I'm quite familiar with that sand.
It would be very useful if you could share some of the details through descriptions and photos, if you took them, of how you went about drilling in sandy soil like you have there. I know that there are other folks who read this thread, and are from the sunny, sandy South.
Your experience could help others, with similar soil conditions, to also be successful.
My guess is that you used drilling mud to keep the sand from caving in on your drill string. But you may have discovered an easier way to do it.
Fourty feet deep is pretty darn good.
I'm also very interested in how you are going about designing and making your heat exchanger. I think that is probably a difficult part of the project for very many people.
How many Tons of cooling are you expecting from your unit?
I assume that you are going with an air handler for inside your house, although circulating cooling water through ceiling panels would be another approach, if you could find a way to control the condensation problem. I have read quite a few accounts of the use of ceiling panel cooling in European office buildings. Apparently they use humidity sensors (and I would assume de-humidifiers, too) to modulate temperature/humidity so that the dew-point is not reached... otherwise, it would start raining inside.
Anyway, good luck on your project!
Best regards,
-AC_Hacker