#1. Well Drilling. Installation of Probes.

I’m starting a new series. It’s called “DIY Geothermal Heat Pump”. The project used several original ideas. Drilling, in this case, probably, isn’t the correct term. More correctly would be to say - pierce with the hammer drill. I made 12 wells at 6 meters. 72 meters in total. Hammer drill: SDS-Max. On SDS +, the maximum that we managed to pierce was 4m. Our clay soil is quite dense. Digging deeper than 2 m is very difficult - you can even break the shovel.

Check out what happens next in the following video.

Read the Transcript

• Greetings, ladies and gentlemen!
• Today we’re going to talk about heat pumps
• I just want to thank
• our government, that it continues to rise
• the gas price
• This gives us
• the reasons. Gives us economical
• reasons
• to make the world a better place
• I mean
• stop using fossil carbohydrates
• So, today we’re going to talk about the heat pump
• I started this project
• a long time ago. About four years back
• Not sure exactly when.
• My first attempt was to take an external unit
• from the air conditioner. Internal heat exchanger
• freon-water heat exchanger
• Freon heated the water, which in turn heated the house
• In general, this worked,
• but unfortunately, not too long
• About a week and a half. I think
• that conditioner’s compressor broke
• And it broke because, in my opinion,
• I used the electronics from the original
• conditioner, which periodically
• started defrosting the system.
• It went apeshit crazy, because
• the position of thermal sensors has changed
• so, everything went down the drain
• this is my second attempt
• Maybe the third one. It’s hard to keep count
• We dug a hole in the ground
• which will be bricked up
• The entrance into the house, on the right side
• And soil heat exchangers
• I’ll start by showing you
• how I made the soil heat exchanger
• So, what is a soil heat exchanger?
• It’s just a pipe
• half-inch metal-plastic pipe,
• which is sealed from one side.
• I use regular bolts to seal it
• I made a thread cutter from one bolt
• for the metal-plastic pipe
• Then, the same bolts
• are used to seal the pipe
• I hope it’ll withstand the pressure
• smear it with a good sealant
• and screw it in
• [demonstrates how to do it]
• [demonstrates how to do it]
• After that I’m doing this trick
• I do it so that the sealant
• that I put there
• gets compressed and thus seals the bottom part of the pipe
• And that’s not all. To each pipe
• I connect a thermal sensor
• about 2 meters up form the bottom end
• I tape it to the pipe, so that when
• we lower it into a hole
• it doesn’t fall off.
• Ok, now it’s ready. Moving on to the second part.
• Here I use two things:
• first - elongated drill with the diameter about 30 cm
• It’s needed to drill a hole
• to make a, sort of, guide
• for further insertion
• of the so-called “spear”
• It shouldn’t be too long, because
• we won’t be able to drill too deep
• What is a “spear”?
• It’s a half-inch pipe with a tip on the end
• Let me show you the hammer drill
• I don’t know how long it will last
• I have 2 spears
• First, 3 meters long
• Second, 6 meters long
• It’s better to use solid pipes
• Because they can break at the place of welding
• See, it’s already started to crack
• This means that it will crack further
• It’s better to use solid pipes
• for this purpose
• Or you can eventually lose the pipe
• Now let’s mount a drill
• Yeah, one more thing
• we need to drill at a slight angle
• to capture the maximum possible area
• under the ground
• Look at this. That’s a really powerful drill
• I think I won’t go
• any further
• we’ll need to pierce it
• I’ve changed the drill to the sharp pierce
• Interesting fact, while I was piercing at the top
• it went really slow
• now, it seems like I passed
• more compressed soil
• or maybe it’s because the pipe is not vibrating
• so much, it went a little easier
• I add some water so that I’ll be able to pull the pipe back
• If you do not add water
• it goes back
• much harder
• I’ll show you how it goes
• The pipe is pulled back easily enough
• Alright, I pulled the pipe back
• now we’ll insert the 6 meter pipe
• I’ve soldered that crack
• that we noticed earlier
• Now, let’s insert this pipe
• I’ll add some water here
• Let’s get punching…
• So, we’re 5 meters deep
• and the pipe comes in much harder
• Just look how it goes
• Seems like we need to add some more water
• Whoosh,.. last time it went pretty easy
• I’ll need to call a Superman
• See how well the joint turned out
• if it broke off
• the pipe would have been lost
• Well,
• It certainly better to use solid pipes
• If you need to make a join
• then do it as deep as possible
• It mostly breaks at the top
• Despite the curved
• welded pad
• it breaks in a circle
• that’s because of a strong hit load
• I’m aligning the pipe
• and that’s pretty much it
• at least with the probes
• And sometimes you just have to be creative
• A winch. It seriously stuck this time
• The first probe came tight
• And the second one
• is also tight. They went in tight too
• Maybe it’s some kind of weird patch of soil
• But let’s keep going
• Alright..
• in about 5 and a half hours
• I filmed this video and drilled 3 holes
• Soldered temperature sensors, inserted pipes, had lunch
• That’s pretty much the whole deal.
• In general, it took about five hours with lunch
• About a little bit more than an hour per hole
• 6 meter hole
• 6 multiplied by 3 = 18 meters per today
• Of course, I could’ve done more
• if I’d do it from morning to evening
• Work for eight hours. Then five holes is quite real
• But be careful, there’s a chance that you may pass out working like that