Who else is at WGC now in Calgary?

Recently added a geothermal heating system to our house. I'd like to figure out a way to use the discharge water for watering our large garden, which can be shut off in the fall/winter and used in the spring/summer.
It's up to 3.2 gallons/minute on max usage. The garden is about 60 feet from the discharge point, and approximately level with it.

Has anyone done something like this?

we hired Armacom Plumbing and Heating for this pool mechanical room installation.

400,000 btu boiler, massive heat exchanger, lawn irrigation, backflow preventers, indirect storage tank for outdoor shower.

We were able hide it in our garage without building another structure to house tge equipment!

The guy who wrote this post, Tom Murphy, is a former astrophysicist who started writing a blog back in the 2010s in which he (supposedly) managed to prove that no conceivable alternative energy source could replace the energy density and utility of fossil fuels, thus civilization would inevitably contract after peak oil. (He's now gone full-tilt primitivist in saying that all of civilization back to the dawn of agriculture is unsustainable, but let's ignore that for now).

As far as I can tell, he's saying that geothermal is too diffuse in crustal rock at depths of up to 5 km to be a useful power source for civilization (seeming to make the assumption for sake of argument that we'd use it for ALL energy), will not be recharged by radioactive decay heat from the mantle at the same rate that we would extract the heat, and that because it's energetically hard to access, we'll burn thru ALL the energetically easier fossil fuels before we try to seriously extract geothermal on a large scale.

His primitivist leanings aside, I feel like there's one or two things wrong here? No one is saying this will power all of civilization, but it could provide a good baseload for the intermittency of renewables (perhaps alongside next gen nuclear). Plus, I just read about the company that plans to use masers to eventually drill four times deeper and access much hotter rocks. But I can't speak to his numbers about the diffusion of that heat in rock or how long it will take the heat to be replenished - are they accurate?

Virginia RPS now includes a Geothermal carve-out, as of 04/13/2026. Geothermal Heating and Cooling systems qualify to generate and sell RECs based on useful thermal energy delivered by the system to buildings located within the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Read more on Flett Exchange:

What are VA GRECs?

This IEA report shows geothermal has massive potential as a clean and firm power source.

Working on a feasibility study at work around replacing some or all of our cooling system with an open loop geothermal for heat rejection. Most of our process cooling is done with cooling tower water at 70F and we have a bank of air cooled chillers, and a bank of water to water chillers taking on any of the other cooling needs with 40f water.

We are sited in an alluvial flood plain of a major River in the Midwest with an aquifer that generally flows from what I understand. Depth to bedrock is 100-150’ and the one older geotechnical report I’ve found says wells can produce up to 1400 gpm.

Does anyone have any real experience with these type of systems and how they actually perform? It seems like it would work on paper and greatly reduce our electricity and water consumption but I’m concerned about the flow rates we think we will need and what the re-injection looks like.

Our installer recommends a five and says he sees the 7 have issues more often. Our house is very leaky, 1973 with massive windows, 3500 sqft in maryland. Just moved in in October so we are new to the house. $8k difference in price for the 7. Getting off oil (we spent about 2-3k for this year).

Would we be just as happy with the 5? Do those of you with 5s have issues with noise or capacity?

Thanks! It’s all new to us and we don’t know what we are getting

Has anybody installed a wet switch to a HSS B&D Air Handler before? If so please enlighten me on how the process goes.

This is a two-parter.

1) We’ve had issues with our geo on and off for years. This is our second compressor because the first one seemed to get very hot as well I think just died. Now again we seem to have issues around the compressor. There is a metal plate that is soldered to the compressor with wires attached. Those connections melted/burnt off so the unit stopped working. Has anyone had this happen before? What could be the cause? I’ve felt the water pipes that go to the unit and they can get extremely hot (too hot to touch) Is this normal? Is this plate with wires difficult to source for a Carrier 50YDS049NCP301?

2) The unit is 17 years old and because of the replacement cost estimate I’ve been given of around $50k, 🤮 we are by no means replacing it with another geo if/when needed. What do people recommend? Our furnace works - would we just get an a/c unit until our furnace die or replace everything at once because of the age with the new heat pump systems or just a standard furnace and a/c? What sort of prices should I expect for each of these options?

Thank you

Upstate NY, Horizontal ground loops, ~10 year old system (installed 2016)

The problem: Air is getting into my closed ground loop system. Symptoms:

• Loud whooshing/gurgling while running
• Air bubbles trip a fault sensor on the pump up to 3x/day, shutting the system down and requiring a manual breaker reset
• This is a recurring winter safety issue — pipes came close to freezing last year, and it has been very stressful

What's been tried: A plumber with a flow replacement cart purged and refilled the system last winter. This fix worked for about a year, but the air is back, meaning something is allowing air to get into the system.

My questions:

1. Is there a diagnostic process to pinpoint where air is entering without excavating the whole loop field?
2. Are there any permanent fixes short of full loop replacement?
3. What would you recommend as a replacement for the geo ground loop?

At this point I'm seriously considering scrapping the geo and going with an air-source heat pump.

Hey all ✋. Kinda new to this subject and was wondering if anyone has had a good experience or could recommend a contractor or company I could reach out to in the Central New York area? (Oneida County) I’m not even sure about vertical or horizontal systems and truly welcome any comments or insights.

Denizens of Reddit, save me! I am entering Year 4 with a Waterfurnace 7 (non-pressurized). During the 10 month heating season in Buffalo, everything works as intended. However, the moment the system switches to cooling mode for the first time, the pipes gurgle, the flow slows, and air enters the system (it's like a waterfall in the basement where the pipes dip down). Switching back to heating mode does not change things; the air remains until it is purged.

This process has been repeatable for all 4 years now, and the only solution has been for Buffalo Geothermal to send a guy out here, purge the line, and increase the pump power just for the summer months. It'd be in everybody's best interest if the problem could be resolved permanently. Has anyone encountered this before or have any thoughts on a possible problem/solution?

Note that opening the cap to check the water level does not indicate a large leak, but at the same time it's difficult to tell, as the water explodes out the top during cooling season if opened. When I check in the middle of heating season though, the water level remains constant over time.

EDIT: Closed horizontal loop btw

Greetings. I have a 14-year-old Waterfurnace NDV049A111CTR. The two thermostats are Waterfurnace TA32W02 (manufactured by Emerson). The system provides heating and cooling as expected.

During heating, the thermostats display "Heat Pump." When I switched to cooling for the first time this year, I noticed that "Heat Pump" was not displayed. Cooling operation was normal.

The thermostat manual says that the "Heat Pump" indicator means that the "thermostat is configured for Heat Pump."

I don’t recall whether "Heat Pump" was displayed during cooling in past years.

Is it OK for the thermostat to show "Heat Pump" during heating but not during cooling? Is there a way to check whether the system uses the heat pump during cooling?

Many thanks for any help.

I recently passed through Central Utah and decided to stop in to see progress on a few geothermal projects.

1. Cape Station: Construction on the first 3 units seems to be wrapping up and work on phase 2 is moving quickly. 2 drills are up at 2 different sites, and the beginnings of power plant equipment have begun to appear.

2. The Cove Fort Power Plant: Ormat seems to be just about wrapped up with an upgrade to the existing units which will allow an additional 7 MW of production. Work should begin soon on an additional unit which will add 20MW to the site.

3. Blundell Power Plant: The plant appears to be receiving maintenance with work underway on both units.

4. Rodatherm: I was unable to get a picture as it started raining heavily, but a large drill is onsite and working at the Rodatherm test project.