Quote:
Originally Posted by The kitchen guy
At the end of the day it works like a heat pump by removing heat from cold water. It requires at least one well and is essentially electric heat. It does not work efficiently in very cold weather so additional heaters are required.
I think the future for cost effective heat will be in gas (l.p. or natural). It is low in maintenance and increasing in abundance.
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I think it is misleading to say it is "essentially electric heat". While electricity powers the unit it doesn't provide the heat.
Why would it not work efficiently in very cold weather? The ground water remains at a fairly constant temperature year round so the "efficiency" of the system should remain constant as well. I believe what you may have meant is that the system is not good at providing large amounts of heat on demand. Therefore, if the house is not well insulated, as it gets very cold the heat loss of the house exceeds the "instant" replacement ability of the geothermal unit. It's the nature of the geothermal units to provide a steady moderate amount of heat. It is the efficiency of the house insulation that is the failure point, not the geothermal unit. As others have pointed out, the units work best with a modern, very well insulated home.
I agree with your take on natural gas, IF the federal government doesn't screw it up. However, gas is still an carbon emission source, no matter how cleanly it burns. Geothermal is much less so because the heating is a transfer process rather than a burning process. Yes, some electricity, often from a carbon burning plant, is used to power the process, but much less than with burning fuels to provide heat.
I played around with heat pumps in the early 1990s. I got burned and had to eventually trash the unit and lost about $7000. The systems are far better today but the key thing is to get a unit from a major manufacturer and a local installer who has been around for a while and knows the product and is comfortable with installing and maintaining it.