Well, mid-May and no cold nights in sight, so the end of our 10th geo heating season. I wish I could say no problems at all, but not quite. The worst was a sinkhole that developed about 4 years later at the well site. Looked to be about average 8" diameter and went maybe 6 feet down. The installer came back and filled it in with some special filler and charged me only for materials, something like $200. So not a big deal, but could have caused some injury if I hadn't spotted it. Second was that one of the loop pumps was getting fairly hot. Installer said it shouldn't do that and came back and replaced it for about $500. In retrospect, it was a wet-rotor pump and it was always set on the lowest speed, so I suspect an air pocket developed that probably could have been flushed out by switching it briefly to high speed. Anyway, no other problems since then. Zero problems with the loops, zero problems with the Bosch water-to-water heat pump, bought as an overstock on ebay for about $3500. Mine is an unusual, part-DIY hydronic system using the original cast iron radiators. For details see my video at With oil having hovered near $4 last several years, I believe I've roughly recovered my costs by now. But that's nothing compared to eliminating the stress of keeping the tank full, calling around for prices, or shoveling 200' of driveway for the oil truck (only to have all the snow melt by the time he shows up). Now I've also got geo air conditioning, installed 8 years ago, completely separate except for the loops, with a Trane heat pump and a Rheem air handler, both similarly bought on ebay and zero problems with either. It consumes about half as much power as the old 10 SEER outdoor unit. I've got 32 solar panels, grid-tied with net metering, that easily cover the power consumption for both heating and cooling. Anyway, thanks to the folks at GeoExchange, without whose encouragement I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to go through with the install. Sorry to hear all the problems some people have with their systems. But not everybody has big problems. Just saying.
