![]() ![]() The current federal incentive is limited to the standard $300 tax credit for Energy Star HVAC installations. ![]() A good installer who's knowledgeable about heating and cooling as well as your local geology will be able to make those calculations for you. Your actual break-even point depends on local utility rates, excavation/drilling costs, how well your house is insulated, the efficiency of the model you choose, and what incentives your state or utilities provide. ![]() A study by the Air Force Institute of Technology calculated that it takes on average just seven to eight years to recoup costs. ![]() Houses on small lots or rocky ledges could require three or four holes drilled about 300 feet straight down, a much more costly process.Įven with this significant front-end investment, geothermal systems are so energy-stingy that the payback period is remarkably brief. (The actual length should be calculated by an expert, based on the optimal heating and cooling loads for the house.) A setup that size could cost as much as $20,000 to install, depending on soil conditions and how much digging and drilling is involved.Ī house on a big lot, for instance, might be able to use pipes laid horizontally in long, 4-foot-deep trenches. Here's the rub: You have to bury a lot of pipe-about 1,500 to 1,800 feet for a typical 2,000-square-foot home. That's just a tiny blip compared with the approximately one million conventional heat pumps sold during the same period, even though ground-source heat pumps cost about the same to buy. Costs & Tax Incentivesĭespite these benefits, only 47,000 geothermal units were installed last year in the U.S. With the addition of a desuperheater, residual warmth from the system can also supplement a conventional water heater, further reducing energy bills. The direction of refrigerant flow, which is controlled by the reversing valve, determines whether heat is moving into the house in winter (shown) or being pulled out of it in summer. Heat Pump Parts: As with ordinary heat pumps, the refrigerant in a geothermal heat pump runs in a loop through a compressor, condenser, expansion valve, and evaporator, collecting heat at one end and giving it up at the other. In the 29 years since Jim Partin, one of the technology's earliest adopters, installed one in his Stillwater, Oklahoma, house, he's replaced only two contact switches. Most come with 10-year warranties, but they can last much longer. Geothermal units simply pump liquid, so they can be parked indoors, safe from the elements. (To produce the same number of Btus, a standard heat pump on a 95-degree day consumes 2.2 kilowatt-hours.) Geothermal systems are twice as efficient as the top-rated air conditioners and almost 50 percent more efficient than the best gas furnaces, all year round.Īnother advantage is that there's no need for a noisy outdoor fan to move air through the compressor coils. That's why it takes only one kilowatt-hour of electricity for a geothermal heat pump to produce nearly 12,000 Btu of cooling or heating. So while a conventional "air-source" heat pump struggles to scavenge heat from freezing winter air or to dump it into the summer swelter, its "ground-source" counterpart has the comparatively easy job of extracting and disbursing heat through the 50-degree liquid circulating in its ground loop. Geothermal Heating and CoolingĪs our cave-dwelling ancestors discovered long ago, if you go far enough underground, the earth's temperature stays at a constant 50 degrees or so, no matter how hot or cold it gets outside. Geothermal systems, in contrast, transfer heat through long loops of liquid-filled pipe buried in the ground. The difference is that conventional systems gather their heat-and get rid of it-through the outside air. In principle, a geothermal heat pump functions like a conventional heat pump, by using high-pressure refrigerant to capture and move heat between indoors and out. "With this technology, everybody could be sitting on top of their lifetime energy supply," says TOH plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey. Super efficient geothermal heat pumps provide clean, quiet heating and cooling while cutting utility bills by up to 70 percent. Are Geothermal Heat Pumps Worth the Money? Read on to understand how geothermal heat pumps work, how much they cost and if they’re a smart investment. Given all the attention being paid to solar power these days, you might be surprised to learn that one of the most promising solutions to high energy costs isn't up in the sky but buried deep under your lawn. ![]()
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