How do I dig a big hole?

[Flomot flash]

No need for all that pounding and pulling and such. Just put a garden hose adapter on the end of the pipe and let the water do the work for you. As long as the diameter of the pipe is not too big the water should eat the clay from the bootom of the hole and wash it out on the surface. Many people with shallow water tables drill wells this way. Of coarse it is much more efficient with a drill bit and a spinning pipe, but that is a little hard for the DIYer to rig.

[AnnArborBuck]

Originally posted by samtheman
How will this hole cool water? Geothermal systems require many feet of buried tubing to be pracitical. Have you determined your ground temp? You need to know what temp. your soil is and at what depth to even begin to understand your cooling potential.

He is just trying something out on the cheap, and he only has a few degrees to go down. It may work, it may not, but for a couple of bucks worth in PVC pipe it is worth a try.

[jmccalip]

Ok, I got the pipe out using two car jacks and two 4x4's. This project is on hold until I find someone with an auger....

[Sk8r]

SOunds like you just got more water than anybody in Houston wanted. Hope you're still above water down there!

[jmccalip]

Nahh, pretty dry here. We don't live in a floodzone.

It's funny, this town's so big, we can have thunderstorms and tornado warnings on one side, and sunny skys on the other.

[AnnArborBuck]

I still think if you really saturate the ground it would work. And I mean over at least 24 hours, if not more. Rain usually only goes a couple of inches down, you need to saturate it down 4 feet or so.

[jmccalip]

I measured the hole I made with the pvc, and it was 2ft. I could continue to do this and get the full 10ft into the hole. Someone got an auger I can borrow? lol

[mikehulen]

You can rent an auger from Home Depot or Lowes for about $50 for 4 hours.

That is the only sane way to dig postholes down here on this sand-gumbo mix we have for soil in the Houston area. I just had to sink 4 new holes to repair my fence (Rita damage) not too long ago, and hand diggers would have taken me a year to get one of them done.

[jmccalip]

Well, this project was supposed to be cheap.

If I spend $30 on PVC, $50 on an auger, $50 for titanium tubing....I'll be past my limit. I could have just bought a chiller by the time I get it working.

...But I did seriously look in renting an auger at home depot, except they only go down 4ft, maybe 5ft with the extension rod. That's not deep enough. I guess Every day I'll just hammer it in a bit more....AND THIS IS ONLY A TEST HOLE!!! I can't tear up the flower garden till I know it works.

[Yose]

Check through your friend of a friend of a friend network to see if anyone works for the power company... They have those auger trucks for planting telephone poles... That would git er done

Also, maybe you could find someone who runs those high water pressure horizontal drills for digging under streets and driveways... Maybe they can be used vertically too.

Cool idea... No pun intended... Good luck with this project!

[samtheman]

I still don't understand what you will have when you get the hole dug. One hole will not be any kind of a geothermal loop unless it goes into a well or aquafer. I am not trying to stop you, just confused as to the value of all this effort. How do you intend to utilize this hole?

[AnnArborBuck]

Originally posted by samtheman
I still don't understand what you will have when you get the hole dug. One hole will not be any kind of a geothermal loop unless it goes into a well or aquafer. I am not trying to stop you, just confused as to the value of all this effort. How do you intend to utilize this hole?

If you read his posts this is just a test hole to see if it is worth while to move on from here.

[samtheman]

Originally posted by AnnArborBuck
If you read his posts this is just a test hole to see if it is worth while to move on from here.

If you go to this site http://www.geo4va.vt.edu/A1/A1.htm as well as others you can get a very good idea of the soil temperature in your area at a given depth. This seems much easier than digging holes first.

[jmccalip]

Hmm, I'm between 72-75F. Maybe someone could crunch some numbers and tell me if it's going to crash and burn? lol

[8BALL_99]

I think an Extra fan would do a better job sorry.. Kewl idea but you would need alot of copper in the ground to do much.. With just PVC in a small 10 hole I dont think your going to do much.. The GeoThermal cooling setups I've seen have a couple hundred feet of Copper pipe about 12foot down In a large zig zack shape...They used a drop in titanium coil for the heat transfer in the sump alot like a chiller.. If you could get a back Hoe Cheap and had the pipe.. "Copper has went through the roof in the past couple months" This would be a great idea.. Cause when you look at a chiller you have to consider cost of the unit But also the power to run the thing.. And if its inside it will make your Ac run more too.

[AnnArborBuck]

No kidding about copper. Reels that used to cost 3k now are going for 12 k. The 1 1/2" inch sticks at Lowes are like $127, wow.

Edited for spelllling

[Cuby2k]

Originally posted by jmccalip
Hmm, I'm between 72-75F. Maybe someone could crunch some numbers and tell me if it's going to crash and burn? lol

Well, crunching numbers would tell you much but you need to identify your parameters first. Honestly with the soil temps that you are going to see in a trench, you won't get enough cooling. You need to consider a deep bore hole, something on the order of 200 feet. Like I stated above, once you take into account all of the costs involved in an earth cooling design a packaged chiller does not really look that bad.

One more thing, running the underground pipe in copper would be a huge waste. Use something like PEX, your results will not vary that much.

[jmccalip]

Well, I'll test it when I get it to the full 14ft deep. If it doesn't work out, I'll use it as my dry ice launching tube. The tube fits tennis balls and 20oz bottles perfectly. No risk of explosion.

[goby1]

It sounds like you're digging a big hole for yourself.

[DrBDC]