The previous post about the geothermal heating system home project, part 7, was electrifying and grout! Now, for the exciting conclusion.  Our geothermal installation is close to complete.

Many Hands Make Duct Work

Now begins the lengthy process of running sheet metal and flexible ducts all over the place. In the end, this takes about 3 weeks with an installer and/or the engineer working almost every day. The work involves much banging, cursing, sawing and golden-retriever-exiting to the driveway, where the contractor's front left tire makes an ideal doggy backrest for the duration of the project. All the ducts end up wrapped in cool silvery insulation and sealed with cool silvery metal tape until the basement ceiling (and presumably the attic floor -- I haven't been up there yet) looks like a play structure for a MacDonald's in space.

Note: Apparently, one uses duct tape for everything but ducts, today. In fact, there are those who believe it never was really intended for ducts, but was called "duck tape" because it repelled water. In this mythology, the name "duct tape" came later when people thought, "It can't possibly be called a stupid name like 'duck tape', it must be for ducts and therefore called 'duct tape'." Perhaps Duck Dodgers of the 21st and a Half Century would know. Today's ducts are sealed with gray goop that turns amazingly hard when it dries. Only the insulation is actually taped, and that uses actual metal tape.

A couple of challenges arose. For one, I insisted that the guys avoid further compromising the basement work space. Had I not done so, their natural course would be to use some of the easier, more obvious duct routes, and that might have compromised head room or storage room. They did a good job at this, even to using oval-cross-section ducting where the duct had to run right above the work space. They also worked return ducts into the very tight space behind the geothermal heat pump.

To make up for being a um... durable donkey in regard to space, I noted that it was okay with us if a couple of vents were served through the wall of the laundry room instead of through the floor, involving cutting tile. Who cares about exposed ducts in the laundry room? I also suggested that the downstairs air return vent, which is quite large, be served through a closet wall so the duct came up in the closet instead of through the floor.

The other challenge was a portion of the house resting on a slab. There's enough space underneath to run the ducts, but they have to cut through the the joist header between basement and slab area, They also must break into the underneath through the outside wall, in order to run the ducts. This works, but in the process they discover some water and carpenter ant damage. So -- one more home repair project.

Hello, Central!

At last...central heating! And air conditioning! And an air filter! Yes, we have moved into the 20th century a little late, but we are also running an avante-garde flameless HVAC system that takes 1/4 the power to heat the house that electric baseboard heat would require.

Yes, the doggone thing actually works. As it should. The basic technology, refrigeration, has been around for over a hundred years. It very quietly makes the house temperature whatever we set on that little box on the wall! The box has an upper and lower temperature limit, and we can set the system for cooling, heating, or automatic. We can run the fan separately, if we like. We can program the temperature for different portions of the day or days of the week. Or we can shut the system off altogether.

We're keeping the wood stove for now because (a) we currently have a lot of wood, and (b) last December we had a four-day power outage after an ice storm -- which, incidentally led to us having all that wood. We might look into an emergency generator instead, but for now -- we're good.