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My New Geothermal Cooling Loop!

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:salute: This is well done. Congrats. Is your home entry point on the north side of the house? Also, what again on the drain valve (inside the house, where in the loop, and what type spigot?) I've already got an old PVC line for electrical extension run 15 yards out from just outside my home office window, so I'm part way there if I want to go this route, which is quite amazing. Again, well done sir.
 
Everything I read about doing this said you need some way to keep the dirt around the tubing moist. Otherwise the transfer rate would go down. Are you not experiencing that?
 
Well, going forward no one will ever wonder why your forum nick is "Diggrr", will they? :D

Awesome stuff.
 
Very nicely done! :thup: I remember a few years back rogerdugans did something very similar to this. He had this gigantic radiator ( similar to old type cast iron house heating rads) he got from a job site and buried it in the yard several feet down. A pump similar to an Iwaki running of a 120v AC line to a breaker box and several feet of insulated copper tubing right up to the room where his pc's are housed, then some clearflex from several shut-off valves to each pc. It was some work of art, I've never seen anything like it. His pc's were dead silent you can actually hear a mouse fart :rofl:


Diggrr that is some really nice work. Grats! ;)
 
The loop is buried on the East side of the house, so in the late afternoon it's in shade.
I thought about the placement for a long long time (wanted to do this since rogerdugans, Pelikan and others did it years ago).
My property slopes toward the loop by 2.5', it's parallel to my front sidewalk which drains that direction, and on the other side of the sidewalk is my septic system. With the heavy clay soil, it is always moist where it's at. As a bonus, 20' from the end of the coil is where the county chose to put the one street drain in the neighborhood, every property drains to the front of my place. :thup:
My high clay soil actually has finer particles than sand, so it's packed tighter around the coil than sand could, and doesn't drain away.

Thanks for the kind words guys!!
Here's your pic Robert, it's a Watts brand from Home Depot, as is all my brass fittings. It comes in the color coded baggies they have hanging up:

View attachment 109546
 
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One more thing about the fittings. The crush inserts they include in the package for soft tubing have a .180" ID!!, so I made my own using 1/4" OD copper tubing with a .210" ID...every bit helps.
Flare the tubing, cut it off at 1" length, and deburr. You can see one inside the PE tubing in the pic above.
When I made the piece that joins polyethelene to norprene, I soldered on a ferrule at each end to make a "barb" fitting, and left it long enough to tape my temp probe to the gap in the middle.

*The drain fitting is placed at the lowest point inside the house. Any lower and it would be exposed to outsides' freezing temps in winter.

**Random Note: Norprene tubing is only rated to 10 PSI. Since my loop is really restrictive, and the MCP355 alone is rated at 22 PSI, I pump towards the ground loop first through the heavy-duty PE tubing, and then through the norprene to waterblock, which is after the main restriction.
Just in case you thought my directional choice was odd.
Swimming is fun. Swimming in the livingroom, not so much! ;)
 
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i live in oklahoma..
its hotter n shhhhh here lol...
what are the ambient outside temps in the summer there?
i believe i would like to try this but may not benefit much as you do...
 
Since your frost line is 21" shallower than mine, I would have to guess that if you dug 21" deeper, you'd be fine. :shrug:
Dig a hole and place a thermometer in the bottom, or you could cheat a bit and take one to a construction site on a weekend (let them do the digging for you).

We tend to hover in the 90's in summer, but it's not for nearly as many days that you have.
Been to OK once. Fort Sill. Lost a trailer hitch washer in grass--the earth was cracked so badly like dried mud. Dug a foot and never found the washer....we don't get that here. Ever.
 
rge said:
Wow that is awesome! 14.5C water temps, would be nice for Ivy.
Click to expand...

I SO wanted this to be paired with a new Ivy Bridge build, but alas real life snuck up and sucked my money away!
 
Well Thank You sir! :)

And Thanks to all those stopping in and not posting too!...makes you look at that low spot in your yard, doesn't it?? :D
 
Very awesome sir :attn: ! If my current trip down watercooling lane works out I'll have to think about integrating something into a house when I build one down the road. :comp:
 
Oh yes! If I were around when they built the place, I'd certainly be putting copper pipe along with the drain tile (corrugated tubing) that they bury around basement foundations these days! (in the dirt, away from the gravel layer). :drool:

Sadly though, my house is 175+, so no tile. And I guess they wouldn't have been thinking about computers then either. :D
 
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