It’s officially 2 weeks since we’ve moved into our new house. Ever since Stephanie fell in love with it, the first time we visited, I knew it needed a few important upgrades. The biggest was the heating system. It has an oil-fired boiler and hot water baseboard heating and no AC. The land is nice, the two car garage is nice, the town (Easton) is nice, the house layout is nice, etc., etc. The hvac, however, is not ideal. The boiler, too, has some significant rusting on one of the main boiler flanges. So, I started looking into alternatives.
I quickly learned that geothermal was probably the most efficient and least expensive to maintain. The installation, however, is very expensive. I ended up getting three quotes from some well qualified installers, Coneco, Southcoast Greenlight, and Achieve Renewable Energy. I also spoke with Ultra Geothermal, but they’re a bit too far away to take on a project here in Easton.
I ended up selecting Achieve and a closed loop vertical well system. I chose the vertical well because I was hesitant about using a large area to trench out a horizontal system. While that approach would end up replacing our back yard with something nicer, it would also restrict us from doing any sort of addition off the back in case that need ever arises. The closed loop vertical system also offers a 55 year leak-free warranty and is more efficient than a horizontal system. Achieve and Coneco offered vertical well proposals, but I chose Achieve for a couple of reasons. They have more experience overall since they are one of the largest installers in New England and they focus on individual client (home-owners) projects as opposed large project-based installers.
Since these systems work best with force-hot-air systems, we would need a ducting system installed to replace our hot-water baseboard. Another alternative would be to run radiant heat throughout the floor, but that would mean tearing up all of the existing floor. That is a much bigger project that I’m not willing to take on at the moment. Running duct-work, however, is something I’m more capable of. To that end, I did some calling and got a reference for Des Crowley, an HVAC design guy. He’ll draw up the plans and I’ll do the work. That should save me about eight or nine thousand – the two geo-thermal proposals estimated duct-work to run between ten and twelve thousand.
One more thing I’ll need is to have the electrical service updated. We have 100 amp service now, so we’ll need to upgrade that to 200 amp and have a separate sub-panel installed. Good thing my father-in-law is a master electrician! He’ll get the service set up so we can run a dedicated line to the new units and clean up the existing panel a bit.
So, my plan in a nutshell is:
- Run the duct work
- Upgrade electrical service
- Have Achieve install the geothermal
- Remove the old boiler and oil tank
- Remove the old baseboard water lines
The nice thing is that the work I have to do is all up-front. I do have my brother to help out and I’m sure I can pull in a few others if I need to. Once I see the plans, I’ll be in a better place to estimate the time it will take. And, as always, there’ll be lots to learn. I’ve never run duct-work before so it’s all OJT for me.
