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Evening, were currently drilling for a ground source heat pump on a new house were building where i work. we have 3 holes at 100m deep but every one is in solid rock. I'm wondering if it will work or not? Anyone got any experience of using boreholes for a GSHP?
I work for a construction company who use the services of a Galashiels company called holequest. On the site I am working on at the moment they have drilled 4 bore holes for gshp use. i will ask them your question tomorrow and get back to you but i think all should be ok
Nice one brickwizard. trying to find info on the best ground is proving hard to find. Even the bloke doing the drilling is not to sure, think he usually does water boreholes!
Just a thought, a Geotechnical Engineer or Civil Engineer may be able to help. If you can find one!!!! 😯
I thought ground source heat pumps were usually made by scraping off a load of mud - say over 6m deep then laying out a run of pipe through which a refrigerant liquid will run and be warmed up.
Not sure how it works with a vertical borehole? Vertical boreholes are usually for geothermal energy - i.e. extracting hot water from the ground. Is this what you are trying to do?
If so it depends on the geology (ability to hold water), the water table (level of water underground) and source and therefore temperature of that water as to it working.
I'm not sure why you are surprised at hitting solid rock at 100m depth? I'm not an expert but the depth of the superficial deposits (muddy stuff on top which is not quite rock) in this country is not too great. I'd have thought that at 100m depth you'd be in solid rock for 90% of the country.
i worked on a house last year that could not get down the full 100mtr ended up with 4bore holes at about 70mtrs and the system works fine as far i know .
Vertical GSHP are entirely normal. So are Horiz.
See here http://www.gshp.org.uk/
Will it work? If it's done correctly, yes.
Plenty of 'borehole experts' on here...
Completely normal for GSHP - horizontal arrays if you have the space / geology / water for it and vertical if you don't. The installers will inject the relevant goop (technical word, that) around the pipes they install in the boreholes. This gives the interface between the pipes and the surrounding rock. As long as the heat can be exchanged between the liquid being pumped and the surrounding rock / earth, it works. Which it will.