Vertical borehole ground heat exchanger design methods
Abstract A critical component of any ground source heat pump (GSHP) system is the ground heat exchanger (GHE) For many residential systems and nearly all commercial and institutional systems, the GHE will consist of one or more vertical boreholes with inserted tubing. Most commonly this is a single or double U tube made of high density polyethylene, but other configurations are possible. The complex nature of the ground heat transfer and the long time constant of the ground create some challenges in designing vertical borehole GHEs. This chapter covers methods for design of these GHEs.