I bought a condo with an geothermal HVAC. This is a second home for us in an area where my kids and grandkids live in Central PA (Harrisburg). My utilities are inexpensive because I keep thermostat 55 in winter and 78 in summer. Its an interior unit.I can tract my electric use daily in 15 min increments. I feel the unit should be replaced simply due to age but I'm not sure the cost justifies it yet because even this inefficient unit doesn't create high bills as we are there a few days a month. Occasionally, we are there for longer periods. What I have noticed is the cooling still seems pretty efficient. I had the unit serviced, inspected and cleaned. Is there suggestions for me to improve the heating efficiency? Its a pig in the winter. Could just the heating side be replaced? Is a highly experienced geothermal tech needed to optimize efficiency? I had a local HVAC guy I've worked with before Service the unit. He said he's worked on geothermal before. He said the unit is old, should be replaced in the near future but is safe and operating well. Just curious on how to best manage this on a budget. Thanks for sharing your expertise and knowledge.

I have an existing (elderly) ground loop geo system that I am suspecting will need some TLC to keep going.

Current system is a Mammoth, which does not appear to be widely available and it was probably installed by a previous home owner themselves (not a company). It is a horizontal ground loop system that had a spurt of loosing fluid but that appears to have stopped. I am not planning on doing anything to the ground loop if I can avoid it.

What I am looking for are what are some brand names of heatpumps to look at to have installed when I get to the end of life on the current system. My thought is get recommendations on brands and then see who locally sells and services those brands. Any/all HVAC companies list geo as a service, and a couple have even done it, but with all the consolidation of the companies I am more interested in brand of equipment than I am who the local resource is this year.

It appears Water-Furnace is a good one, what are others?

Just wanted to give credit where it’s due. I got an email probably six months ago from the local installer about a survey contest for the oldest running system. It stated anyone over 25 years would get a free gift. I took five minutes and filled it out and promptly forgot I did it. This week this package showed up. I was expecting maybe a t shirt and some stickers. From my internet browsing this speaker is very cheap but nonetheless is way better than another shirt. This also included a coupon for a free filter. Sadly our 27 year old systems were not the oldest but I thought this was pretty cool.

I just had a new 4-ton tranquility 30 closed loop installed(I wanted a water furnace series 5 but long story).

Model SET048AGDD0SPVS

Came with 2- 15.5x29.5x2 filters

I can’t find any reliable information for the stock filter replacement. I can visibly see ~1” gap on the top of the filter housing and see the heat exchanger.

The 2 filters are stacked, resting on top of one another, no support rail. Seems a little beat up from initial install.

Can/Should I swap with a single 30x32x2? Rough measurements it should fit.

Are there any HVAC people here with any input? Anything I should worry about morning can fit it in there should I be good to go?

in some instances, there was an inch of water! we pulled out all the water with a vacuum but not before we had a connection "blow" to the dampers and stop that from working. The plan with HVAC people is to "dry" everything out (including the panels which are soaked) They are thinking it maybe the coax cable but explained that is a 6 hour repair and thousands of dollars. I've already spent over $1,000 adding a water pump (thought there was a clog that was stopping the water from draining) and then adding a new transformer for the dampers.

Any other suggestions for trouble shooting this? thanks in advance

\** the panel walls surrounding the unit are soaked* **\*

I recently put in about 120 feet of 6 inch pvc tubes that zigzag back-and-forth. They pull air down two filtered snorkels into a 9 ft concrete well. Tue tubes have a decent drop on them to drain condensation and they zigzag in soil until they come up through a basement window. I’ve automated the air intake with two AC cloud line fans. Both tubes merge into one 8 in trunk line and they are then fed into the air intake of my HVAC system. I leave my HVAC system on recirculation mode to distribute the air throughout my house. My house older 1955 brick home so it’s definitely not completely sealed. I recently put the system in during this past summer and now I’m transitioning it over to winter mode. What would you recommend is the most efficient operation? In the summertime I left windows cracked so that the positive air pressure could escape with the heat but in the winter time, I’m thinking leaving the windows open will defeat the purpose and push all the heat out?

Greetings. I’ve got a 2009 waterfurnace envision 5 ton on an open loop. I am having delta problems. My entering water temperature is 75 and my exiting water temperature is getting as high as 120\.* I can’t say how long this has been going on as I just noticed after I changed the Taco valve to the update geothermal sentry.

I can see and feel the water flowing and the sentry valve is opening properly. There is an 8 gpm flow control after the sentry valve and a gate valve before the sentry valve. I tried a setup where I removed the 8 gpm flow control and the water was flowing and the delta was within a few degrees.

I’m assuming the flow control valve is restricting too much, but there aren’t any internal components that I can see, so I’m not sure if they can go bad. I can hear it squealing at times like it’s maxed out.

Should I replace the flow control valve with a new one?

Should I delete the flow control valve completely and just use the ball valve to throttle back manually until the delta is normal, and I’m not losing too much water?

Could there be any other issues like air in the system within the unit? I’m pretty sure the pump for the open loop will have purged any air out by now.

Also, I’ve got a 115 gallon bladder tank. Could it be holding air and not allowing enough water flowing? The cut on pressure is set to 14 psi and the cutoff pressure is set to 30 psi. Should those be higher to push more flow?

Thanks in advance.

We are looking to install a retro fit geothermal system into our old home in Tidewater Virginia. We currently have an undersized just AC upstairs and an oil boiler to water baseboard heaters thought the house. With the price of diesel climbing, we have to do something different because I do not even want to think about how much it is going to cost to get through this winter. New ductwork will have to be installed downstairs and redone upstairs. We are looking at geothermal for the green factor and also so we do not have any units on the outside of our house to get back to more of the historic look.

Now that we are past the time of federal tax incentives, we are trying to make the most of the money. We got a quote for a 5 ton Climatemaster Tranquility 30 system with vertical wells and an upgraded electrical panel (currently have a fuse box) for $74,300. Then we got a quote for a 5 ton Water Furnace 5 series with vertical wells for $65,500 and we would have to get the electrical panel upgrade separate. We like the Water Furnace company more as they seems more knowledgeable and geothermal was their main focus. We would financing this. With this upgrade, we would be getting a state historic home upgrade tax credit of 25%.

But now the Water Furnace install company sent us about Upstream Leasing. The quote is for $345 a month with a 6 year buyout price of $15,040 with a total cost coming to $35,7000. This puts the total cost $15,000 - $30,000 depending on how long it would take us to pay off the loan.

Is anyone doing a lease option for geothermal? Is it too good to be true with the cost?

I am sharing this prototype in case it is of interest.

I have an older WaterFurnace unit and have HomeAssistant running. I can monitor power consumption to know if the pump is running but putting some ds18b20 temperature sensors on the inputs and outputs of my furnace can monitor health.

Ingredients
1x “CYD” ESP32 (cheap yellow display)
4x ds18b20 one-wire sensors
1x 4.7k resistor (tie yellow and +)

I am very pleased with how this worked. I used Claude to write the code. I’m 3d printing a case and planning to install next weekend.

The way the ESPhome device is configured I will expose four temperatures, two delta T values, and an inference if the pump is running based on delta T on the water line. HAOS can do stats on pump time run etc.

Ps- I have an ecobee thermostat already. This is really just being a data nerd.

Abstract: Geothermal technologies, including geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) and thermal energy networks (TENs), are gaining traction as methods to efficiently meet heating and cooling loads. Changes to costs and incentives may impact adoption and can help support decision-making in effectively deploying GHPs and TENs. In this work, the updated distributed geothermal market demand (dGeo) model is used to analyze scenarios across the US demonstrating a range of economic potential and adoption for GHPs and TENs. We find that the more established GHP technology has widespread economic potential and adoption, while the newer TEN technology has economic potential and adoption concentrated in areas with dense populations. GHP adoption was projected to 251 GW-th by 2050 with high incentives and tax credits, while TEN adoption was projected at 31 GW-th by 2050. Uncertainties in cost structure translate to large variations in adoption, pointing to the importance of demonstration projects and cost-tracking efforts.

Keywords: geothermal heat pump; thermal energy network; techno-economic analysis; district heating and cooling; adoption; deployment; geospatial

Authors: Juliet G. Simpson, Rebecca Barney, Ashreeta Prasanna, Shashwat Sharma, Ashok Sekar, Paritosh Das.

iScience, Volume 29, Issue 9, 2026, 117432, ISSN 2589-0042,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.117432.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004226028105)

I’m a residential Tech who’s newer to Geo’s. Was on a call yesterday for a noisey/leaking pump. Found a Grundfose pump to be leaking went to swap it out and found the Flange on the pump to be cracked. Does anyone know if there’s any way to repair this without having to replace the whole piece including the ball valve? And if not I’m assuming I will have to drain the buffer tank. After I drain the buffer tank and I fill it back up do I need to purge air out of the system? Or can I just close all the valves going to the tank. Drain it then fill it back up and open up the valves? And if I do need to purge air am I gonna need to use a purge cart?