Litchfield Geothermal Installation Sample Project

11 ton horizontal loop installed in one week at about 2/3 the cost for similar drilled vertical boreholes.

(See more projects below.)

The back lawn is where the loops will enter and leave the house.

This apple tree is preserved. See wire flags depicting loop location.

Stuart arrives with a proper track excavator with 2' wide bucket.

Digging begins in the meadow. Top soil is not segregated here, but is at lawn.

Spray paint shows where the loop will reverse itself.

Shrubs are easily removed.

At the trench to the house, the irrigation system is cut and repaired.

Pete takes a photo of the 4" leader drain, also cut and repaired.

Trenching kept away from yellow flagging, where archaeologists had previously conducted test pit analysis, and found quartz flakes were avoided.

Four parallel trenches on the north loop.

T he tractor trailer truck arrives with the loop pipe from the Midwest.

The four 11/4" at 700' plastic wrapped, plus the 300' coil of 2" and two 20' sticks plus fittings.

Truck leaves after we unloaded.

Wet drill used to core concrete foundation.

The supply and return lines at the foundation.

The pipe is placed. The record heat made this labor intensive.

At the 5' deep manifold location, the loops are ready to unroll.

Placed 2' on center at the corners where sharp backfill rocks will not damage them.

At deep trench (8'plus), the coil is unrolled with an axle.

Piles of dirt are hand shovel backfilled to keep loop pipe in place.

Around the many wide radius returns.

The 4four 750' loop pipes are ready to be 500 degree heat fused to the Tee connections.

Dan uses the cold clamp to be sure pipe fitting into manifold is snug.

Duct tape indicates supply.  White tape for return so pipes are not confused.

Supply and return lines complete.

At the 170' ends, a 2" to 1 1/4" and 1 1/4" Tee is used.

The manifold section is carefully hand backfilled before the excavator completes the work.

During backfill, the ends of the system are marked with PVC stand pipes.

the dozer gives a good finished look.

What was a partial meadow with shrubs is now more open. 11 tons of loop at 3300 feet are an average 7' below the surface.

Inside, the line was successfully pressure tested to 44 psi for 22 hours.

Heat pumps are ready to install!

Bottom line is that the cost to install this is about 2/3 what it would have cost to drill vertical boreholes.

Where there is adequate space (about 1 acre used for 4 heat pumps in a 4 zoned house) and deep soils, horizontal loops are the way to go!

Second bottom line is the need for a knowledgeable and involved customer client as we had here.   Thanks Tyler! Congratulations on your new system!

Back to index page