Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Anyone have geothermal? Questions...

Not for me, but I think my neighbor "up the hill" from us told me when we moved in that he had geothermal. Why question is to the discharge or runoff of some system designs.

There is an area by our lot lines that is always wet, sometimes appears to be running. We have 3 evergreen trees that have died in that area. I think it is something he is doing, and curious if it could be the geothermal setup he has.

I've done some studying and it appears that an "open" design, pumps water in from ponds, lakes, under ground spring,etc., and then discharges the water out; as opposed to a closed design the recycles the water and/or other solution?

I can't ever mow in that area until the real hot weather comes or we have had no rains to help saturate that area of my yare.

I most likely will ask him what is coming out of that area first. He has a about a 5ft round area of cement above whatever is discharging. I know he told me once his gutters on the house are all piped out underground, but it has not been raining for a few days.

Before I call the county and have them come look to see what he is dumping on our land, thought I would ask those that have geothermal systems.

We live on the side of a large gradual hill, 2 homes above us, and 2 below. Used to be farm land and most likely has old tiling. We had some tiling put in as well to route our sump pump and gutters, and was hoping this bad area would be taken care of by our tiling. Does not seem to be helping.

Thanks, Randy

Can you just send a soil sample in to get tested, Randy?

I will most likely try that, or maybe the county will stop by and do it if I call them. I think the sanitation department, if there is one would be who I would call for my county.

We have had some other run-ins with this neighbor so I'm sure it will be interesting...

I'm just trying to figure if it would be his geo-thermal system, or something else.

Ewwwwww.... Like his septic system?

I would get the county involved. Evidently he doesn't care what's going on.

Not septic MJ, his laterals are on the front portion of his property. This is just standing water.

Yeah Rick, this guy is a real peach:
1) He tried to sue our builder when we were hooking up our electrical to the main transformer on the lot line. He said it was "his" transformer. Whatever idiot.

2) He burns his garbage out behind his shed. Usually he waits until the wind is aiming at other peoples houses. One night he had a 15ft high blaze going, and we had pizza boxes that were glowing red flying in our yard and on our roof. When I confronted him, because my wife said if I didn't she would, he said "oh it takes more than that to burn a house down". I said put it out or the sherrif will be here in 10 min.

3) One day we had just got home and we noticed his dual axle car trailer loaded with green lumber was down our hill into the neighbors back yard below our lot, about 500 ft. We caught him pulling it back home. He said he was trying to move it around by hand and it got away from him. I ripped off our sump pump hose/line from the house, almost took out the kids play set. Karen was furious as our kids play in that back yard.

4) A few months after 3) above, we had just got home again, and his idiot kid came walking down the hill to tell us he was towing a car behind his truck with "noone" in the towed vehicle. the rope came off his hitch and the car barrelled down the hill, almost took out some trees and our 1,000 gallon propane tank, and ran into our house by the dining area. At the time Nathan was still eating in a high chair and sat by that wall. The little smart ass is just like his dad, he said "oh I can fix that damage to your house", we said don't touch it, we called the sherrif. Then when the sherrif said that tank could have blown up, he said "takes more than that to blow up a propane tank", what an idiot.

The car was pretty well totaled. The were putting in a new engine for some poor gal. I told Karen, whatch this, they will try to fix the damage and not tell the gal. This kids nickname is "bondo Bryan" if that tells you anything. We got a call from Allied, the insurance company, they fixed our house, and said Bondo Bryan had so much bondo in the hood, it was like 10time heavier than a normal hood. It took 2K to fix it right.

This is just a few things, I could go on and on, but I'd rather go get a beer and chill.

Sounds like you need to configure your theater setup so that your subs have a large SPL peak in the area of his house. If you can get the acoustics worked out.

Hi Randy,

I didn't go with a Geothermal in the end due to the extremely high start up cost of doing it correctly but I did a lot of research and I'm currently set up in a way that will make for a simple transformation down the road, should I get the extra budget to do it.

Of course, I can't tell if this applies to your neighbor, but here is what I can tell you.

Briefly, there are two types of geothermal systems. A closed system (which I would have chosen) and a two-well system. In a closed system, a long single pipe is snaked through the ground horizontally, just deep enough to gather the heat. Once it's filled, the water constantly flows through then returns to the house. It keeps re-circulating the same water so there is no strain on your well and no dumping back into the soil. This, to me, is the 'proper' way to do it.

The other method is a two well system. Water is pumped up from one well, goes through the condenser, then is dumped out via a second well. Contractors who prefer this system will try to tell you that this is fine because the water remains clean and is placed back into the ground so there is no water loss. (Note, a lot of geothermal contractors around here just happen to have well digging as their, primary business.)

The problem with this system is that underground water tables are very complex. The wells have to be so far apart, but even when you go as close as they will allow, it is more likely than not that you are pulling water from one water system and dumping it back into a completely different water system.

These systems use an incredible amount of water and it is very possible to disrupt the natural flow of the underground water tables. Normally, you think about sucking a system dry and although that is not very common, saturating the other water system with the runoff is a common way to cause problems.

Some municipalities have put restrictions on these two well systems because two many houses in a small area can really cause issues. Either sucking a shared water table dry or super saturating another so badly that you get surface water problems, or even huge sinkholes developing.

I don't have the links handy but if you Google geothermal and throw in some European keywords, countries like Norway and others are much more developed in this technology than we are and you will find lots of advice, regulations, and examples.

Again, I have no idea that this is causing your problems but thought I would share what's possible.

Your neighbor seems a few cards short of a full deck.

The wheel's spinning but the Hamster is dead.