Educate me on geothermal

[aspeck]

Re: Educate me on geothermal

You will have to look at things like, how big is the pond? How much water flow goes through the pond? Remember, when you are heating a house you are cooling the antifreeze in the pipes ... this will further bring down the temperature of the pond water (and warm it up in the summer when you are air conditioning). If the pond is a smaller one, this CAN effect the water temp.

Also, do you boat, anchor, swim, etc. in the pond? If so you will need to protect the pipes.

Just some things to think about. A local utility company did their piping in the bottom of a 2 acre pond ... it is working okay, but not nearly as efficient as vertical piping would have been. The pond is also fenced off and restricted from ALL activity. You can take this for what it is worth.

 

[Caveman Charlie]

Re: Educate me on geothermal

In my area geo thermal heat pumps are load monitored by the electric company. So on a hot summer day when every one is running there AC they shut the power off to your unit. People that have them complain that it then gets to hot in the house. I don't think it's like that every where but, for some reason it is around here. Something you might want to check into in your area to make sure it's not the same way.

P.S. I'm not sure but, it may be this way because the people with the geo thermal heat pumps got a cheap loan from the electric company to put them in. And, I basing my opinion on a couple of articles written about them in the local paper 10 years ago. Maybe things have changes. But, for whatever reason very few people in my area have one or think about putting one in.

Since this is corn farming country what every one in this area does have is a out door corn burning stove for heat. It heats a antifreeze water combination that is then pumped around to where you need it. My brother just put one in and heats his shop and house with one. He says the BTU's from corn are hot enough that he can come out money ahead unless propane gets over 8 bucks a gallon.

For cooling every body just has central air. I'm disappointed in my central air unit. My landlord installed it about 10 year ago. My window AC kept the house more comfortable. The central air unit does not remove enough moister and it's always cold and clammy in here during the summer. Also because houses in my area have there discharge air ducts on the floor I'm tring to push cool air upward from the floor and that doesn't work very well.

The moral of the story: Make sure who ever designs your system knows what he is doing.

 

[aspeck]

Re: Educate me on geothermal

Charlie, yes, the electric companies have given a lot of incentives for geo ... we have one building at the church where the electric for the geo is 2 cents/kwh cheaper than the other electric useage. For the other building, got $2000 per unit credit for installing them. I got nothing from them when I installed in my home.

Depends on incentives you seek and how you negotiate. Doesn't have to be the way you described.