Detailed installation Schema for Geothermal Heat Pump Project

After receiving few questions about installing heat pump, connecting to the heating system and to the water heater, I decided to publish detailed installation schema. Here you can see every valve, pump, pipes, heat pump, water heater and other parts needed to operate the heat pump.

On the upper left corner of the schema you can see the legend for better understanding of the schema. I hope I didn’t forget anything – I cannot guarantee :-)

Electrical part of schema is missing (wiring) because I’m still working on it. Hope I will finish and publish it soon.If somebody finds an error in the schema please add a comment to this post. I case somebody have further question … please do not hesitate to post your comment.

What was the investment in my Heat Pump Project?

I described almost everything but forgot to describe the most important :-). What was the investment actually? The majority of investment represents the vertical geothermal collector. One meter of geothermal collector (drilling + installing + testing + material) cost me about 50 Euro. Nowadays the price is higher. I have 220 meters of geothermal collector so it cost me about 11.000 Euro. Another high investment is heat pump, it cost me 3100 Euro. The total investment was 16.500 Euro.

Geothermal Collector = 11.000 Euro
Heat pump = 3.100 Euro
Water heater + pumps = 600 Euro
Pipes, valves, heat exchanger, other work = 1.800

I also received a subsidy of 2000 Euro for installing high efficiency heating system using renewable resource. So my investment was actually 14.500 Euro. If I would install oil furnace instead of heat pump the investment would be of course lower, but the operational costs would be higher (3 to four times higher). According to my calculations and simulations the cumulative costs (investment + operational costs (electricity)) of my heat pump would met the cumulative costs of oil furnace (investments + operational costs (oil + electicity)) in approximately 10 years. See also the Graph. This is I think called return of investment in 10 years – but I’m not economist so please excuse me.

How my Heat Pump was operating in winter 2007/2008

Here I’m describing shortly how my heat pump was operating last winter 2007/2008, what were the temperatures, what were the costs and other parameters.
An average temperature in year 2007 was around 12 degrees Celsius – Slovenia, central location (this temperature is above average for our location). The winter 2007/2008 was not so cold but lower temperatures lasted quite long time. Here is the data what was happening in heating season 2007/2008:

• We switched on heating in September 24th 2007 and was stopped in May 10th 2008. The heating season lasted 229 days.
• Heat pump was operating 680 hours (approximately 3 hours per day on average)
• Total costs of operating for the whole season were 230 EUR (2550 kWh) - 1 Euro per day.
• Minimum outer temperature was -9.9 degrees Celsius. This peak requested heat pump to run 4,5 hours per day.
• Room temperatures were from 20 – 21 degrees Celsius (night temperatures around 19)
• Temperatures of medium from vertical collector to Heat Pump were from 7 (coldest days) to 12 degrees Celsius (at the start and end of season).
• Temperatures of water in floor heating were adjusted from 26 up to 30 degrees Celsius (talking for returning line – water temperature coming from floor heating back to the Heat Pump).
  
  No maintenance was needed, no problems, just paying bills for electricity :-) I just switched on the heat pump in September and switched it off in May. If anybody has similar experience or totally different please add a comment. Thank you for reading and supporting this page.

Installing Heat Pump and Water Heater

My Heat Pump does not have all needed installation integrated (pumps, valves, expansion…) – it is not “Plug’n’Play” like someone from computer science would say. So the next step was preparing installation schema for external installations (pipes, pumps, wires, heat exchanger and water heater). Luckily I have some background on that subject so it was quite easy for me to prepare all schemas. At that time (2005) not many plumbers in our country have knowledge and skills to install heat pump … so learning again J. Nowadays many plumbers have required knowledge and skills. Here is the photo of already installed Heat Pump and Water Heater with all needed parts that enable heating and cooling. If somebody is interested in detailed installation schema please add your comment bellow with your opinion what do you think about this blog and don’t forget to add your e-mail and preferred language of the schema (currently: Slovenian, English). I will send the schema to you.
Coming next: How my heat pump is operating?