Geothermal heating

[Chaselady]

[QUOTE=nhboat61;198522]As we keep upgrading our camp to full time we keep revisiting our options for heating.

We are looking for thoughts and or expediences about geothermal heating.

Thoughts etc.. ?

We are currently using electric and a pellet stove on the first floor. We are currently using fans , drafts and quartz heaters to get heat up to the second floor.

House is about 2200 sq feet.

Right now we travel to NH every other weekend for 3 or 4 days at a time.[/QUOTE
Please PM me if you decide to go with geothermal. We retired up here and installed it in our home. We absolutely love it but we have learned some hard lessons. We would love to save our fellow forum members the same problems.

[tmm366]

We are currently building a house on Paugus bay. I looked into geothermal but decided on propane hot air. I was advised that geo was expensive to install, difficult to service, and had a long payback timeframe compared to gas. New gas furnaces are super efficient and we are installing foam insulation and Marvin windows. Only time will tell. Good luck. Tom.

[Merrymeeting]

What TMM366 said.

I have looked into geothermal several times over the years. I wanted to use it when we rebuilt our lake cabin into a retirement home. But as TMM said, we eventually concluded that the upfront costs were way too high, the payback would exceed our lifetimes, and we also went with forced hot air propane.

[BroadHopper]

There was a gas pipeline nearby. It was well worth paying the line to the house and coverting the furnace, hot water heater, stove, fireplace and dryer to natural gas. Natural gas is so inexpensive, at the most $130 a month, the payback is estimated 4 years!

[songkrai]

You don't state enough information about the current house.
Basement?
Upstairs? Open stud walls?

Do you have space for duct work?

Some use propane wall heaters or kerosene monitor heaters. There are floor propane heaters.

If money is not the object then all above who mentioned propane furnace are good.

Geothermal has issues in this climate and the payback is just not there.

[tis]

Originally Posted by songkrai

You don't state enough information about the current house.
Basement?
Upstairs? Open stud walls?

Do you have space for duct work?

Some use propane wall heaters or kerosene monitor heaters. There are floor propane heaters.

If money is not the object then all above who mentioned propane furnace are good.

Geothermal has issues in this climate and the payback is just not there.

That's pretty much what we kept hearing when we investigated it. "in this climate" We 're really too cold up here to be that efficiente. I know someone who got rid of it. I really wanted to do it, too.

[Belmont Resident]

If the place is not a full time residence then you do not want geothermal.
Also other things to consider are how the house was built, is it very well insulated?
Geothermal is not something you turn on and off or up and down, it takes hours maybe days to heat up and stabilize to temp.
I am right now re-painting inside a house that was built 7-8 years ago in Southdown, and it uses geothermal to heat and cool. It cost him a little over $1100 a year for heating and cooling costs for a 7500sqft home. Unbelievable for a house that size, but he also designed the house around the geothermal system pretty much.
Geothermal works great and there was or still maybe a lot of tax credit benefits to installing it, but I wouldn't recommend it for an older house or a small house or camp.

[tis]

Originally Posted by Belmont Resident

If the place is not a full time residence then you do not want geothermal.
Also other things to consider are how the house was built, is it very well insulated?
Geothermal is not something you turn on and off or up and down, it takes hours maybe days to heat up and stabilize to temp.
I am right now re-painting inside a house that was built 7-8 years ago in Southdown, and it uses geothermal to heat and cool. It cost him a little over $1100 a year for heating and cooling costs for a 7500sqft home. Unbelievable for a house that size, but he also designed the house around the geothermal system pretty much.
Geothermal works great and there was or still maybe a lot of tax credit benefits to installing it, but I wouldn't recommend it for an older house or a small house or camp.

That is very interesting. It obviously works for some. We were completely discouraged from using it.

[chasedawg]

We installed Geothermal in our home and absolutely love it. I know several other home owners that would agree with me. However, that being said, like always, you have to have a professional installer that has been trained specifically on Geothermal. When checking into Geothermal ourselves we hear stories about people who did not like Geothermal. It turns out their installation was not done properly. If they used a well for water source in some cases the well was not deep enough. The system was not sized properly, etc.
We heat 5000 sq ft. with 14' ceilings including garage which has radiant heat floors. The heat is a gentle heat. No cold spots. You set the temperature at 68 degrees and it never goes lower or higher. We were told that heating and cooling our home would cost us $5500 a year with gas or oil. We pay $1500 a year with Geothermal. That to me is a pretty good pay back. The survey was done by NH Coop. They did offer a $4500 rebate if you met certain qualifications. I'm not sure I would do it for a seasonal home on an island, however. Digging a well plus not having the house well insulated would not be worth it for me.

[tis]

Originally Posted by chasedawg

We installed Geothermal in our home and absolutely love it. I know several other home owners that would agree with me. However, that being said, like always, you have to have a professional installer that has been trained specifically on Geothermal. When checking into Geothermal ourselves we hear stories about people who did not like Geothermal. It turns out their installation was not done properly. If they used a well for water source in some cases the well was not deep enough. The system was not sized properly, etc.
We heat 5000 sq ft. with 14' ceilings including garage which has radiant heat floors. The heat is a gentle heat. No cold spots. You set the temperature at 68 degrees and it never goes lower or higher. We were told that heating and cooling our home would cost us $5500 a year with gas or oil. We pay $1500 a year with Geothermal. That to me is a pretty good pay back. The survey was done by NH Coop. They did offer a $4500 rebate if you met certain qualifications. I'm not sure I would do it for a seasonal home on an island, however. Digging a well plus not having the house well insulated would not be worth it for me.

Do you think your system would still work well if you set your thermostat higher? I couldn't stand 68, I would be frozen.

[Belmont Resident]

Originally Posted by tis

Do you think your system would still work well if you set your thermostat higher? I couldn't stand 68, I would be frozen.

TIS I wasn't trying to discourage just stating what I've learned from doing homework and talking with those who have it.
chasedawg pretty much summed up what I said.
And yes you can set the temp up higher then 68 but as mentioned it is not a system you turn the temp down when you leave then turn it back up when you return. It is meant to be set and stay at a specified temp as temperature changes tend to take hours depending on how much of a change you are looking for.
It is a great system and one that we will be looking at for our camp when we build it.

[DickR]

I have "geothermal" (ground source heat pump, or GSHP), and I love it. The thing is relatively quiet, and it just runs now and then to keep the house at even temperature. However, mine is a special case. The house is superinsulated, so the heat load is very, very low, compared to "ordinary" construction. GSHP was a good fit for the situation.

I always advocate making the house as stingy on heat loss as is reasonable to do so, before looking for a cheap source of heat for it. Conventional heating systems don't come in the wide range of capacities as do GSHP systems, and thus tend to be oversized for the house. With GSHP, each additional ton (12,000 BTU/hr) of heat load costs extra, due to the increased size of the ground connection and the unit size itself. Accordingly, A GSHP typically is sized to be no bigger than needed, so, yes, recovery from a temperature setback tends to be much longer than with the typically oversized conventional system.

For a GSHP, the ground connection can be in the form of a closed-loop "slinky" loop of black plastic pipe buried 6-8 feet or more in the ground. Depending on soil conditions, 200 feet of coil may be needed per ton of heat load. This takes a certain amount of backyard space, and around the lake this may not be as readily available as in other parts of the country. The other form of ground connection commonly used is a drilled well, the Standing Column Well (SCW) design, as in my case. We were going to have a new well for the house anyway, and with the superinsulated design of the house I knew the load would be small. For such a design, you need on the order of 80 feet of water column between draw and return per ton of heat load. The drilling cost can be considerable, a major portion of the total GSHP installation cost. In my case, the well didn't have to be any deeper than was needed for the house water supply; it's actually deeper than needed for the heat pump. The unit is a two-stage, two-ton unit, and it keeps the house (close to 4000 sqft) at temp in first stage only, through the coldest weather we've seen so far (it's in its second winter).

For an existing house, of conventional construction, GSHP would be a much tougher sell.

Songkrai, what did you mean by "Geothermal has issues in this climate?" One of the nice things about a GSHP is that below 6-8 feet underground the temperature is fairly steady and moderate (around 50 F) year round. If the ground connection is sized properly, that heat source stays at a fairly steady temperature and thus the efficiency and capacity of the unit remains steady throughout the year. In contrast, the efficiency (coefficient of performance, or COP) of an air source heat pump, like the Mitsubishi ones mentioned (good units) drops with outside air temperature. However, any heat pump is more "efficient" than straight electric resistance heating (baseboard, quartz heater, etc.), because a given amount of electric power is used to move some heat from outside to inside. You get, as heat, all of the electric power used by the heat pump plus whatever heat it drags in from outside.

[Belmont Resident]

Originally Posted by DickR

I have "geothermal" (ground source heat pump, or GSHP), and I love it. The thing is relatively quiet, and it just runs now and then to keep the house at even temperature. However, mine is a special case. The house is superinsulated, so the heat load is very, very low, compared to "ordinary" construction. GSHP was a good fit for the situation.

I always advocate making the house as stingy on heat loss as is reasonable to do so, before looking for a cheap source of heat for it. Conventional heating systems don't come in the wide range of capacities as do GSHP systems, and thus tend to be oversized for the house. With GSHP, each additional ton (12,000 BTU/hr) of heat load costs extra, due to the increased size of the ground connection and the unit size itself. Accordingly, A GSHP typically is sized to be no bigger than needed, so, yes, recovery from a temperature setback tends to be much longer than with the typically oversized conventional system.

For a GSHP, the ground connection can be in the form of a closed-loop "slinky" loop of black plastic pipe buried 6-8 feet or more in the ground. Depending on soil conditions, 200 feet of coil may be needed per ton of heat load. This takes a certain amount of backyard space, and around the lake this may not be as readily available as in other parts of the country. The other form of ground connection commonly used is a drilled well, the Standing Column Well (SCW) design, as in my case. We were going to have a new well for the house anyway, and with the superinsulated design of the house I knew the load would be small. For such a design, you need on the order of 80 feet of water column between draw and return per ton of heat load. The drilling cost can be considerable, a major portion of the total GSHP installation cost. In my case, the well didn't have to be any deeper than was needed for the house water supply; it's actually deeper than needed for the heat pump. The unit is a two-stage, two-ton unit, and it keeps the house (close to 4000 sqft) at temp in first stage only, through the coldest weather we've seen so far (it's in its second winter).

For an existing house, of conventional construction, GSHP would be a much tougher sell.

Songkrai, what did you mean by "Geothermal has issues in this climate?" One of the nice things about a GSHP is that below 6-8 feet underground the temperature is fairly steady and moderate (around 50 F) year round. If the ground connection is sized properly, that heat source stays at a fairly steady temperature and thus the efficiency and capacity of the unit remains steady throughout the year. In contrast, the efficiency (coefficient of performance, or COP) of an air source heat pump, like the Mitsubishi ones mentioned (good units) drops with outside air temperature. However, any heat pump is more "efficient" than straight electric resistance heating (baseboard, quartz heater, etc.), because a given amount of electric power is used to move some heat from outside to inside. You get, as heat, all of the electric power used by the heat pump plus whatever heat it drags in from outside.

The homeowner in Southdown had a well drilled just for the geothermal system. The the house is on town water and sewer.

[SIKSUKR]

Geo has zero issues with climate.The beauty of it is the heat(btu) source is always the same temp year round.Unlike above ground heat pumps that have limitations on ambient outside air temps.My partners system is fantastic.His made a much shorter payback when he installed it 7? years ago because of all the energy credits offered at that time.Another bonus is it has its own electrical panel(though more upfront $) that has a substantialy reduced rate from the rest of the house usage.

[songkrai]

What was the total cost of installation?

[nhboat61]

!st, thank you for all the information. This makes a good read and helps us think about the options.

So, from what I understand to this point, the ground water is around 55-65 degrees, then I suspect that we would need something to heat up that water to say 70. Thayt would then need to install water baseboard heating ? Circulator pumps and the such.

This is starting to sound like it is better to have this installed in new construction, then a 50 yr old house .

[songkrai]

Here is some more information.

"Drilling Costs

Drilling costs for a geothermal pump system can run from $10,000 to $30,000, depending on the size of the system and the type of ground that has to be drilled. These drilling costs have to be added to the cost of the heat pump system when calculating the total cost of a geothermal heat pump installation.


System Cost

Geothermal heat pump systems cost around $2500 to $3000 per ton of capacity. Given that an average to somewhat larger home will require three tons of heating/cooling capacity, the cost comes to about $7500 to $9000 for the actual geothermal heat pump equipment.


Cost Comparison

Assuming average costs, the total cost of a three-ton geothermal heat pump system would be $8250 for the heat pump and $15,000 for the drilling, for a total of $23,250. A traditional electrical heating and cooling system costs around $4000 a ton, so an equivalent three-ton traditional heating/cooling system would cost around $12,000. However, keep in mind that the utility bills of homeowners with geothermal heat pump systems tend to average 20 to 30 percent less than homeowners with traditional heat/cooling systems. Assuming a savings of $80 a month on your utilities, the extra $12,000 you paid up front for the geothermal pump system will be recouped in 13 years (and geothermal pump systems last 20 to 25 years, on average)."



LINK

[Belmont Resident]

Originally Posted by nhboat61

!st, thank you for all the information. This makes a good read and helps us think about the options.

So, from what I understand to this point, the ground water is around 55-65 degrees, then I suspect that we would need something to heat up that water to say 70. Thayt would then need to install water baseboard heating ? Circulator pumps and the such.

This is starting to sound like it is better to have this installed in new construction, then a 50 yr old house .

Geothermal is not baseboard heat! Geothermal uses duct work to bring the heated air in.