Geothermal Heat Pumps

Ground-loop heat pumps — loop types, flow, water-to-refrigerant operation, and charging and troubleshooting the geo system.

5 guides

• Geothermal Flow Rate, Charging, and Common Issues
  How to verify and set loop flow on a geothermal system, how charging a water-source heat pump differs from an air-source unit, and the common real-world problems — air-bound loops, low flow, wrong entering-water temps, and weak antifreeze — that masquerade as refrigerant faults.
• How a Ground-Source Heat Pump Works
  How a ground-source (geothermal) heat pump moves heat between a building and the earth using a buried loop — the same vapor-compression and reversing-valve concepts as an air-source heat pump, but exchanging heat with stable ground temperatures instead of outdoor air, which is why it's so efficient.
• Open vs Closed Loop Geothermal Systems
  The two ways a geothermal heat pump exchanges heat with the earth — a sealed closed loop with antifreeze, or an open loop that pumps well/ground water through and discharges it — including the loop configurations, the tradeoffs, and the failure modes unique to each.
• The Desuperheater for Domestic Hot Water in Geothermal
  What a desuperheater is on a geothermal system — a small extra heat exchanger that grabs heat off the hot compressor discharge gas to preheat domestic hot water, why it makes the most hot water in cooling season, and how to troubleshoot one that isn't producing.
• The Water-to-Refrigerant Heat Exchanger in Geothermal
  How the water-to-refrigerant heat exchanger in a geothermal unit works — coaxial vs brazed-plate construction, how it acts as the condenser in cooling and the evaporator in heating, and its main failure modes: fouling/scaling, low-flow freezing, and refrigerant-to-water leaks.

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