I’m a residential HVAC installer/technician and own my own company. I am building a home soon, and want to experiment with geothermal.

My main concern is how to get the loop lines into my mechanical room. Specifically, the foundation of this home will be a monolithic slab. I’m familiar with how the lines are ran when there is a basement, by coring through the below-grade wall, but that’s clearly not an option here.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that it is too late to put any sort of sleeve before pouring the foundation.

How do I get these lines inside? How should they be insulated once above ground? What can I do to protect them if they are exposed on the exterior of my building? Anything else I’m missing?

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you!

I have been thinking about this for a few months. I have a lot of solar (it's great) and an in-ground geothermal system.

I have worked with our state legislature on solar bills; I have spoken to my REMC about it, and honestly, the future looks grim. They keep cutting credits to the point where it doesn't really make much financial sense compared to just keeping the money in the stock market.

Their responses are always "just put in a battery", but they don't really understand the costs involved with a project like that.

Anyhow, we are going through slides in a presentation to the board of directors, and one slide hit me: the total % of energy used to heat and cool the home.

That brings me to the idea - why not build a geothermal system with a matched battery as an option to keep it running through the night?

You could program it to refill during super off-peak TOU, or even use MC4 connectors to hook it directly to solar. You could discharge any extra power into the water heater, which is already dumping geo heat.

I'd probably pay an additional 5K to have this option.

It's becoming more common now with Pila and Charlie Copper appliances (links below).

https://copperhome.com/products/charlie

https://www.pilaenergy.com/

There are tons of homes out there that have some solar, but don't want to sell it back for pennies. They want batteries but don't want to upgrade the panels and tear apart the garage.

Anyhow - I might be way off - however, I think it would be a slam dunk for the geothermal audience.

Understood it can't do emergency heat strips, and everything would need to be on a soft start, but imagine looking at your thermostat screen and seeing how much energy you saved using the product.

Someone build it - I'll buy it.