The mechanical room of the ranch house.“We drew up a few different options, and open-looped geothermal was one of them,” Crane said.
Doing an open-loop system was possible because of access to good ground water. Rather than using a series of borings, open-loop design meant there was just one supply well and one rejection well. Energy 1 used a direct, horizontal drilling technique to run the lines below-grade to the edge of the ranch house.
“This was a beautiful, pristine ranch with mature landscaping, vegetation and manicured grass,” Crane said. “You want to be able to finish the project and not be able to tell, a month later, where the work happened. A lot of our due diligence was in making sure the area of disturbance would be minimal.”
The radiant heating system already in place at the house was staple-down in a 4-in. slab on the ground level and staple-up on the second floor. Keeping this in mind, Energy 1 decided to use two three-ton ClimateMaster Tranquility High-Temperature (THW) Series water-to-water units.
“We’re retrofitting the heating plant,” Crane explained, “but not the heat distribution… so in our engineering process, our equipment selection process, we asked what would be the best equipment for this particular application, and in this case ClimateMaster turned out to be the one.”
The mechanical system used Taco zone controls, Grundfos circulators, a Well Mate pressure tank, Bradford White storage tanks and a back-up boiler from Lochinvar. Energy 1 also installed a propane-fired, high-capacity generator for back-up electrical power.
The work was completed in just six weeks in October-November 2011, with some additional time for fine-tuning and system balancing.
“This is another project that we’ve signed up long-term for annual service and maintenance,” Crane said. “We’ve also tracked our initial energy projections post-commissioning… We’re actually beating our original projections in terms of the savings and efficiency of the system.” To date, propane usage has been reduced by approximately 70%.
The homeowner is happy with his results, and Crane is glad to have another satisfied customer.
“Dealing with the higher-end residential market, a lot is involved even before you put boots on the ground,” Crane said. “You need the right plans in place so you can execute.”
