r/geothermal

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.

Posting for my son. His house has a ground heat pump in place, about 15 years old. Heat exchanger in air ducts moves the heat through the pretty big house (2500 SQ ft? More?). Ground system had been having some flaky behaviors, maybe bad sensors, maybe air in the loops, had been trying to troubleshoot but it had been working though not perfectly and throwing errors — and then he had a bad lightning strike that took out a substantial bit of stuff in his house — lights, breaker, induction top — along with some of the ground heatpump HVAC system. One circuit board for soft starting the compressor was clearly bad — scorched, burnt diode, etc. But now it seems the compressor is also fried. (Quoted $8k) And who knows what else in the system got fried. Basically any circuit board he would get is custom made and expensive. There are more boards besides the one he already replaced.

So one idea is to replace the whole thing with an air to air heat pump. Warranty, parts available, the current standard. He’s in SW PA. His winters get pretty cold, so obviously a cold weather air system, if that’s the solution. The ground system, it seems, is less repairable. Everything with a long lead time and high expense. He’s in the thick of it now, having thrown some $$ at the old system, wondering whether to keep going with that or jump to modern and interchangeable technology.

Presumably the underground stuff is all fine and already there, so the major expense of a ground system is already in place.

Has a lot of solar, and wants to burn electrons and not fossils.

Opinions? Wisdom?

TL;DR:

• Fervo Energy successfully raised $1.89 billion in its initial public offering, positioning itself to expand geothermal energy production amid rising electricity demand.
• The company is currently building its first commercial geothermal power plant in Utah, and plans to add more down the road.
• Geothermal energy is attracting increased interest for its "clean, abundant" output, but high drilling costs and environmental concerns — like a heightened risk of seismic activity — remain barriers to wider adoption.