Geothermal Heating and Cooling Cost Savings? 

A geothermal heat pump is an ideal year-round system for almost every home. If you now have an old heat pump, you will be amazed at how comfortably warm the heat is from a geothermal heat pump. In the summer, it can provide plenty of low-cost cooling, even on the hottest afternoons.

These systems are extremely efficient. In the winter, for each $1 on your utility bills, you get up to $4 worth of heat ($3 free heat from the earth). Basically, a geothermal heat pump uses the ground around your house for its heating and cooling capacity. Over its life, a geothermal heat pump can save thousands of dollars and be less expensive than oil or propane.

In the summer, the savings are also great. Whereas your old central air-conditioner may have an efficiency of 8.0, some geothermal heat pumps have efficiencies as high as 20, Even more important is the steady cooling capacity for comfort and good dehumidification (for allergy sufferers).

Geothermal Heating and Cooling Cost Savings? 

A geothermal heat pump is an ideal year-round system for almost every home. If you now have an old heat pump, you will be amazed at how comfortably warm the heat is from a geothermal heat pump. In the summer, it can provide plenty of low-cost cooling, even on the hottest afternoons.

These systems are extremely efficient. In the winter, for each $1 on your utility bills, you get up to $4 worth of heat ($3 free heat from the earth). Basically, a geothermal heat pump uses the ground around your house for its heating and cooling capacity. Over its life, a geothermal heat pump can save thousands of dollars and be less expensive than oil or propane.

In the summer, the savings are also great. Whereas your old central air-conditioner may have an efficiency of 8.0, some geothermal heat pumps have efficiencies as high as 20, Even more important is the steady cooling capacity for comfort and good dehumidification (for allergy sufferers).

A geothermal heat pump can also cut your water heating costs substantially. In the summer, an optional desuperheater diverts the waste heat from the air-conditioner to the water heater. This provides free hot water as a by-product of air-conditioning. During the winter, the geothermal heat pump can use the ground to heat your water at half the current costs.

Geothermal heat pumps attain high efficiency because the ground temperature stays fairly constant year-round. You can imagine how much easier and more efficient it is to draw heat from the ground at 50 degrees than from the frigid outdoor air. In the summer, the situation is reversed and the cooling output remains high no matter how hot the weather is.

Most geothermal heat pumps use a water/antifreeze-filled plastic pipe loop buried in your yard. This earth loop is used instead of the typical noisy outdoor condenser fan unit. This results in a simpler system with the small, quiet mechanical unit located indoors (garage, utility room or basement) for protection. If you have wells or a pond, they can be used instead of the ground loop.

There are many designs of geothermal heat pumps to choose from depending on your budget, yard and specific needs. The ground pipes are normally buried in a very narrow horizontal trench dug with a backhoe or ditcher. If your yard is small, the pipes can be placed in vertical holes drilled into the ground. Both methods are equally effective if designed properly.

For the best comfort and efficiency, select a geothermal heat pump with multi-level (two or three) heating and cooling outputs. Two-level output models use either two small compressors or a single two-speed compressor and a variable-speed blower. This allows them to adjust the output to match the changing heating and cooling needs of your house.

James Dulley is a mechanical engineer who writes on a wide variety of energy and utility topics. His column appears in a large number of daily newspapers.

Copyright 1998 James Dulley

Comments

Cool Written by Guest on 2005-12-08 14:39:45 i used this for my project and it was very help ful thanx

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