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Why Change to Geothermal:
(Updated May, 2009) Geothermal heating and cooling can cut your utility bills anywhere from 15% to 1/3 of what you are paying now! What you will save is totally dependent on what you are currently using (efficiency of equipment and fuel type). Propane and fuel oil always have been expensive forms of heating. Until now people in the country really didn't have any other option. Natural gas is more reasonable (usually half the cost of LP or fuel oil) but still occasionally surges in price. Electric rates have increased quite a bit in the last two years. Since Geothermal uses electricity to move the grounds heat into your home this has also affected the savings comparisons. Currently propane is about $2.00 / gallon and natural gas is $1.00 / therm. Last winter in some areas propane was over $3.00 / gallon. Unfortunately ComEd has totally removed any incentives for electric heating (even very efficient electric heating such as geothermal). Currently the total cost of a kilowatt-hour of electricity is about 10 cents. This is not the highest rate in the country but is certainly not the lowest rate either. But even with the higher electric rates and current lower fuel rates geothermal still saves you money in comparison to burning gas or oil. Below I go through a cost comparison of propane at $2.00/gallon and geothermal with an electric rate of $0.10 / kilowatt-hour.
1 kw-h =3413 BTUs,
91,500 BTU * .95 = 86,925 BTU (useful heat)
What these calculations show is that using geothermal is like paying $0.61 a gallon for propane compared to an 80% furnace or $0.73 a gallon compared to a 95% furnace. Can you remember when propane was that cheap? It has been awhile! Going through the same calculations with natural gas the savings comes to about 15% with a 95% furnace. Not near as good as comparing to propane but remember I am comparing to the highest efficiency gas furnace you can get and it is still 15% better than that. Now also remember that these comparisons are to gas prices that have currently dipped in price do to the recession. Do you think they are going to stay that way? Probably not and when fuel does increase again it will probably increase at a faster rate than electricity.
President Obama put more than words behind addressing our energy and environmental issues when he signed the stimulus package. With the federal stimulus package that went into effect early 2009 there is a 30% federal tax credit for installing a geothermal heating or cooling system. This means you will get back 30% of the cost of the geothermal system in the form of a tax credit. This is like removing almost 1/3 of the cost of the system. This is a real stamp of approval for geothermal from our government and makes it quite a bit more affordable to install. This tax credit is in effect untill Dec 31, 2016.
Even the United States government encourages the use of geothermal heating and cooling. Both the EPA and DOA have written articles encouraging the use of geothermal.
(Updated May, 2009) Since 2005 when I originally wrote this page I believed geothermal was a great thing mostly do to the fact that you saved a lot of money. If it was also good for the environment, that was just an extra plus. Now I feel that geothermal's environmental plusses are even more important than its personal cost savings aspect. If you watch the news, the History channel, National Geographic's or any other scientific media you have seen that we are approaching some really bad times if we do not stop our habit of burning oil and gas. Evan my companies name sake (Polar Bear) is on the path to extinction because of our fuel burning habits. Unfortunately most of us are somewhat short sighted about an approaching problem until it's upon us and of course with this problem that is when it is too late. What do you think our children and grand children will think of us when they are dealing with the effects of global warming (coastal cities under water, drought, extreme storms or maybe even an ice age) when they see photos of us driving vehicles that use two to three times the gas they need or heating our homes in the same manner. We are at a point were we should know better. We will not be thought of as the great generation as the World War II generation was. We will be thought of as the arrogant wasteful generation! Again for the first time the federal government is backing up their words with action. The 30% tax credit is a big stamp of approval that geothermal is the right thing for this country environmentally and for energy independence. Personally I know in the last four years I have saved at least 5000 gallons of propane because I heat with geothermal now. A gallon of propane is about equivalent to a gallon of gasoline and can also be used for transportation or heavy equipment such as for farming. Being a son of a farmer I think of it as enough fuel to farm 100 acres for those four years. Isn't that a better use of that fuel rather than burning it up for heat!
Made in the USA energy: Do you ever feel guilty when you have the thermostat set at 72 and you hear the furnace kick on? In my mind I know that some of that is because that furnace is sucking in gas that I am paying for. Also it is creating some pollution. But there is more to it than that. It is how I feel every time I fill the car with gas. As Americans we are stuck in a vicious loop. We are dependent on oil so we buy a large percentage of it from the Middle East, a lot of it coming from fanatical governments and people. Those governments become wealthy and powerful from this American money. Then they become a threat to our way of life. We send our military there to eliminate the risk which cost more money and worst yet American lives. But when the risk is lessened we will continue to pipe more money to that region until it all happens again. It's a vicious circle.
With geothermal you can help put a small dent in this vicious loop. Most of our electricity is generated with home grown energy. According to ComEd their electricity is generated from 92% nuclear, 4% coal, 1% is biomass and 3% is from unknown sorces.
Longer equipment life: Did you know the average life of a gas furnace is 15 to 20 years? A large part of my business is repair and I do see a lot of furnaces fail in this time frame. A geothermal system has an expected life of 25 to 35 years. That is about double the life compared to a gas furnace. Also a large part of the expense of a geothermal system is the earth loop. The pipe in the loop is warranted for 50 years and the expected life is 200 years. So in a practical sense that is an infinite life.
Safety of your family: As I mention on my main page a natural gas or LP gas furnace when operating correctly is very safe. It should only produce carbon dioxide and water vapor in the flue. But if it doesn't burn correctly it will produce the deadly gas carbon monoxide. In about 1 out of 20 furnaces I inspect the carbon monoxide is above acceptable limits in the flue gas. With a geothermal unit there is no risk of carbon monoxide because it is not burning anything. Also once all the gas appliances in your home are converted to electric you can disconnect the gas line all together. This will eliminate any possibility of a gas leaks or a gas explosion.
The wood furnace is what I used the longest. I cut and split wood for 15 years and only removed it once I had the geothermal system in. Beyond the back breaking work of cutting, splitting and hauling the wood you were a slave to that furnace. To keep it going strong you had to add firewood at least every two hours. If you were not there or forgot, you had to go through the ordeal of starting the fire again. At night if I jammed it full and put it on low most of the time there were hot cinders left in the morning, but not always. I once calculated, from the money I saved in propane I made about $4 to $5 an hour cutting wood. I didn't include all the time in loading and cleaning ashes though. Yes the ashes! I have inhaled plenty of them. About every 3 days I had to stop the fire and clean the ashes out. As careful as I was I always got some in the air. Then I had to always start the fire again. Another thing was my home's insurance company considered any type of wood burning an added risk so I had to pay a higher rate.
The corn furnace was the other thing I tried. I even built a 100 bushel corn bin in my basement. I thought this would eliminate the need of constantly loading it with fuel and the work of cutting wood. It was better in this regard. But you still needed to load it with corn twice a day. Also a hard piece of ash had to be removed once a day. This was called a clinker. There was always the possibility the fire would go out when this was removed. For the most part corn doesn't like to burn so it was hard to get the fire started again. The combustion chamber of the furnace also had to be cleaned about every month. This was worse than the wood ashes. Very fine ashes. Corn prices fluctuate quite a bit also. At the moment the price of corn is very low. But if it is a poor growing season next year it may be high (Feb, 2011 update: corn prices have gone up by about two to three times of what they were back in 2005, partially do to ethanol demand. Corn has increased from below $2/bushel to over $7.00/bushel. There is no way it can be economical to burn corn now.) The other thing is mice. With all that corn in the basement you had to be very careful not to let the mice get started.
With both the wood and the corn furnaces they had to be shut down when it got above 35 deg outside. They always had to have a fire going so at this temperature they made the house too warm at their minimal setting.
With a geothermal unit it just does its job and heats or cools your house as it needs it. It puts out the heat you need when it is very cold or just chilly outside. It is just like having a gas furnace were you don't even realize it is there. Your house is just kept comfortable.
Free hot water: Well it is not always free. The unit has something called a desuperheater. When the unit is being used as an air conditioner the desuperheater can put the heat, taken from your home's air, into your domestic hot water before it goes out to the outside ground. This doesn't take any more energy so it is free hot water. During the heating season the desuperheater takes some of the heat that would be transferred to your home's air and puts it in your water. This is not free heat since it could have been put into the homes air but it is low cost heat (300% to 400% efficient). This is just supplemental, your hot water is topped off with resistive electric heat. If you have large hot water needs ECONAR does offer units where this is the primary hot water heater source. An example of this would be for heating a swimming pool.
It's an Air Conditioner also: By the end of winter that ground you have been stealing the heat from to heat your home is cold. So in the summer your geothermal system just reverses itself and moves the heat out of your home's air and puts it in the ground. Since the ground is the condenser you do not have the noisy outside unit of a conventional air conditioner. The only way your neighbors will know you have air conditioning is if you invite them in your home to cool off. This is also very efficient. You don't see as high of savings as with the heating but it is more efficient than a conventional air conditioner.
So What is this Great thing called Geothermal?
How is the grounds heat brought into my home? Geothermal retrieves that heat by circulating water through a series of pipes in the ground. This is called a ground loop. These loops can either be horizontal or vertical.
With a horizontal ground loop a hole is dug (similar to a basement) where the pipes lay on the bottom in a circular pattern called a slinky. Each slinky circuit will handle one ton of capacity (12,000 BTUs). This one circuit will have 600 to 800 feet of ¾" pipe but will only take the room of about 3 feet wide by 80 to 110 feet long. If the heating load of your home is 48,000 BTUs, you would require four circuits of these pipes. The hole would be about 25 feet wide by 100 feet long. For Northern IL it needs to be at least 5 feet deep. These four circuits are connected together in parallel and brought back to the home with a 1 ¼" or 2" pipe.
With a vertical ground loop the pipe is set in bore holes rather than on a bottom of a pit. The pipe goes down approximately 170 feet and then back up again. One of these loops will handle One ton of load. So again if your house requires 4 tons of heating load it will take four bore hole loops. Each one of these loops only has to be 15 feet apart. So this requires a lot less space than a horizontal ground loop. You can also guess that there is a lot less pipe needed (340 feet compared to 600 feet per ton load). The disadvantage is that drilling the bore holes is more expensive. Drilling the bore holes is the same process as drilling a well. So four well holes will cost more than excavating one large basement sized hole. But if you don't have the space this is the way to go.
There are two other less used methods. The first is to drop something like the horizontal loop into a lake or pond. With this method your home is being heated by the pond or lake water. But of coarse you need to be next to a lake or pond. The other is an open loop system. The above are considered closed loop systems. With a closed loop system the same water circulates in and out of your home just like the water in the radiator of your car. In an open loop system you pump ground water into the unit and dispose of it once you have taken some of the heat out of it. This has the disadvantage of having to dispose of 5 gallon per minute (4 ton system). Also you need a source of ground water that can handle that volume. The trend is the use of closed loop systems because of the water issues.
(Updated May, 2009) We have installed several open loop systems. We are very careful to get the approval of the well driller for these. You want to make sure your aquifer can handle the demand and that you will not affect any of your neighbors water supply. Also your well and pump must be able to handle the demands of the heat pump and your domestic water. There must also be a way of dispersing the water once the heat has been taken from it. This can be in a river or creek or put back into a second well. The advantages of an open loop system is if your well and pump have the capacity the installation cost is quite a bit less, there is no digging a loop field and it is a little more efficient since on the average the water is warmer than with a closed loop.
How do I heat my home with the cold ground? Yes, there seems to be a problem here. In this area the frost line is around four feet deep. So it gets near to freezing there but not quite. Also ground water pumped from a well is somewhere near 50 degrees. So how can I heat my 70 degree home with that cold ground? Refrigeration is the answer. The geothermal unit is a heat pump. It is a refrigeration unit that can put heat in your home or outside your home. It works on the same principle as your refrigerator. Your refrigerator removes the heat from your food and puts it on the refrigerator's back condenser coils. If you have ever touched the coils on back of your refrigerator they can get hot. This heat amplification effects occurs when you compress a gas. The gas will get hot. If you cool the hot gas and then release the pressure off the gas it will be colder than it was originally.
You may have noticed that I have avoided the word "heat pump" until now. That was on purpose. In the 1970s and early 1980s heat pumps got a bad reputation in this area. Those were "air exchange" heat pumps. This is when you have a unit that looks like a central air conditioner sitting outside of your home. In the summer it works just like a normal air conditioner but in the winter it's function is reversed. Instead of taking the heat from your home to the outside air it takes the heat from the outside air into your home. This works great when the outside temperatures are warmer, lets say above 40 degrees. But as the outside temperature gets colder the capacity of the system decreases. Of course this is the opposite of what you need. As it gets colder outside you are going to need more capacity to keep your home at 70 degrees. Usually at around 20 degrees there is no capacity at all. So with these systems you need to supplement or back-up with 100% resistive electric heat (this is the 100% efficient one not the 300% efficient) or some other source of heat. Needless to say people were expecting 300% efficiency and were getting 100% efficiency electric bills. Now the advantage of the geothermal heat pump is the ground temperature stays very constant (it acts like a big buffer). As the outside temperature fluctuates and hits extremes the ground temperature will only slowly lower as you remove the heat from it through the winter season. This means you get near the full capacity through out the full winter no matter what the outside temperature is doing. So you get 1/3 the electric bill for the full season compared to resistive heat. Having said that I will now refer to the ECONAR unit as a heat pump since that is what it is.
Why ECONAR (GeoSystems) for Geothermal?
Update March 2013: ECONAR is now a brand under Enertech. Enertech manufactures several brands of geothermal heat pumps and is very dedicated to the geothermal industry. ECONAR equipment is still manufactured up north but now at Mitchell, SD. Enertech headquarters is in Illinois at the town of Greenville. I still focus on the ECONAR brand.
Why A Polar Bear Air for Geothermal?
My Geothermal Installation?
Determining the heating and cooling load: I measured the walls, windows, doors and ceilings of the house. It is a ranch so also the basement floor and walls and windows were measured. The R value of insulation in the walls and the ceiling was noted and also if it is a tighter new home or a more loosely made older home. Even the direction of the walls is noted (north, south, east or west). All this data was then entered in a "Manual J" heating and cooling load program. For this area a -4 degree outside temperature is used for a 70 degree inside temperature for the winter. A 89 degree outside temperature is used for a 75 degree inside temperature for the summer. Under these conditions my house would require 47,000 BTUs to heat and 13,100 BTUs to cool it.
System is chosen: Once that I had the heating and cooling loads of the house I could decide on the best ECONAR system for it. ECONAR has developed a program to help do this. It uses the number of heating degree days and cooling degree days (you may have heard these terms on the weather radio), the heating and cooling load of the house, the performance and output of the equipment being considered and the price of the gas you are currently using. I used this program to determine how much I will save compared to my propane furnace and to weigh out the cost and benefits of different types of equipment. The savings were remarkable. Even though I had an ideal from my training and doing some estimates, seeing it all laid out for your own home is nice. From all the data above the program calculated out that I should use 1362 gallons of LP a year. This seemed like a reasonable number since I usually buy a little over 1000 gallons of LP in the winter and I also burn a couple of cords of firewood a year. Using $1.70/gallon LP price (it's now higher) the program calculated I should save $1891 a year with the GeoSource 2000 or $1989 a year with the GeoSource Vara 2 Plus. The Geosource 2000 is the basic unit with a single stage compressor and single speed fan. The Var 2 Plus has a two stage compressor and variable speed fan. The savings difference is due to the increased efficiency under lighter heating loads. There are also comfort advantages with the variable speed fan. But of course this unit is more pricey. Since the saving were not that much more and for my life style I decided to go with the more basic unit. Both of these units were just a little undersized for my heat load. They should handle about 97% of the heat load requirement. For 3% it was not worth going up one size on the system. It is more economical to add a small resistive heater that will kick on if the geothermal can't keep up. So I added a 5 kwatt heater so my full heat load requirements are met. The reason I am mentioning all of this is because these are the choices you will be making but you will have all the information in front of you so you can make the best choice for you.
Excavation: The horizontal earth loop required a 25 foot wide by 85 foot long by 6 foot deep hole. This will provide enough room for the four slinky circuits and the spacing between them. The slinky circuits are also fabricated at this time. It is difficult to describe them, please see the pictures. All of the connections of the loop are fused together. This is where the pipe and fittings are actually melted together. This eliminates a chance of a fitting leaking. The earth loop is back in a field about 200 feet from my house so a trencher was used to trench the main line to the earth loop.
Install the heat pump: The heat pump was installed next. It replaces the LP gas furnace and sits in the same spot. In this part of the installation care must be taken to have as little resistance to air flow through the heat pump as possible. My duct work was just on the limits of being adequate. If it had any more resistance it would have to be modified. Planning and placement of the earth loop pumps is also done here. ECONAR offers a module pump system that fits on the side of the heat pump. It is a very neat package. I opted to go with external pumps to lower the cost, the performance is the same. A little bit of planning on the lay out of the plumbing keeps it looking nice and lessens pressure drops due to extra fittings.
Since the geothermal system is so efficient usually the current electrical service can be used. Since I ran out of room in my fuse box I ran a line to a load center next to the heat pump. This supplies the heat pump, the resistive back up heat and the water heater.
Purge the system: It is very important to get all the air out of the earth loop lines. Air in one of the loops can cause the water not to circulate in that loop. This will decrease the capacity of the system. I use a high flow / head pressure pump to accomplish this. The water is circulated through the loop at a high flow rate until there is no more air in the line. Then the heat pump lines have the same done to them. Once there is no air in the line antifreeze is added to the system. For a horizontal loop methanol is used. Enough antifreeze is added to prevent freezing to 15 degrees. By the end of winter the temperature of the loop could be as low as the twenties. But it is designed for this.
Start it up: Now it is time to turn the power on and test the system. I consider this one of the more important steps that is sometime not given a lot of importance. This is a fine tuned system and fully testing it is the only way to see if you are going to get the efficiency you expect. Below are the things that are measured and the initial readings I got:
In Heat mode:
In cooling mode:
Latter the desuperheater was connected and tested
Resistive back up heat.
All of these measurements are well within specifications so I am up and running with geothermal
What's the Catch?
(Updated Feb, 2011) Of coarse prices have gone up since I originally wrote this. It has been mostly in equipment and material (I never seem to make anymore money). A 3.5 ton system like the one in my home would cost about $17,000 now. But remember that there is a 30% federal tax credit. So after the credit the actual cost is $11,900 ($17,000 - $5,100). A higher end furnace air conditioner installation will cost you around $6000. So the geothermal system is about twice as much. But remember the geothermal system will save you that additional money in just a few years (as few as 4 years in my case compared to buying a conventional gas furnace/air conditioner install). If I were to do it over again I would get the Vara 2 Plus. With the higher electric rates the higher efficiency rating would pay for itself and the variable speed blower is very nice. I tend to suggest this model now to everyone because of this. The price of a system is very dependent on your situation and the size of the unit. If you go with an open loop the price is quite a bit less. If installation is very awkward or the size of the system is larger the price will be more. To help lower the cost I am happy to work with people who want to do as much of the work them selves as possible. I have had home owners dig their own hole for the ground loops and run the electrical power to up to near the heatpump.
Digging up your yard: As you can see from the pictures my system required quite a large hole. But in my case I put the earth loop in a field so it didn't matter. The only landscaping I will have to do is where the trench is going from the house to the loop field. If you do need to put the loop field in a yard area the excavator I use does a very good job. Once the ground settles it will only need to be leveled off a little and re seeded. With a vertical loop there is very little digging. A bore hole is placed every 15 feet (one per ton of load) and they are connected with a trench to the house.
Noise: The noise is more of a difference than a negative but I thought I should mention it because it is different than what you are use to. The air flow in this system is higher than a normal gas furnace. But if you have air conditioning now it will probably be about the same as what you have now in the summer. This is because this works on the same principle as air conditioning both in heating mode and cooling mode. With a conventional gas furnace the blower speed is lower in the heating mode than in it's cooling mode. With the geothermal the blower is on high both in heat and cooling mode. The noise of the heat pump itself is also different. With a gas furnace you hear the roar of the fire in the burners. With the geothermal heat pump a compressor is running so it is more of a motor humming noise. I would say it is a little louder than most gas furnaces but you don't really notice it upstairs.
Temperature coming out of ducts: This is also more of a difference than a negative. With a gas furnace the temperature of the air coming out of the furnace is usually around 130 degrees. With the geothermal heat pump the temperature coming out of the unit is 90 to 100 degrees. This is still plenty warm to heat your house to 72 degrees. If you stand on the registers it still feels warm.
What if we loose electricity? I know this thought comes to mind since this is an all electric unit. But just about all gas furnaces also use electricity. So if you lose electricity with a gas furnace, even though you have plenty of gas, your furnace will not run. In a way you have less risk with the geothermal heat pump because you do not have to worry about running out of gas.
It's a no brainer!
Questions?
(Updated May, 2009) I occasionally get calls from out of my area (across the country some times). I am happy to talk with you for 5 or 10 minuets for general questions. If you are looking for detailed, specific information on sizing I do offer a consulting service for a fee of $300. From the information you provide on your home I will perform a Manual J heating and cooling load calculation for your home and then do a cost savings comparison between your current system of heating and cooling to a geothermal system. This is a good way to get an impartial second opinion if this is for you or not. It seems like I end up spending a half a day up to two days doing this analyses. So it really isn't very much money for the time spent.
Thank you
Bob Dorn
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©A Polar Bear Air, LLC
Save Money: For most people the number one reason for switching to geothermal heating and cooling is to save money. Geothermal heat is from 300% to 400% efficient. From high school science class you may remember that you can not be more than 100% efficient when converting from one type of energy to another. Such as natural gas heating is a conversion of chemical energy to heat energy where you get from 65 to 98% of its energy content back in useful heat. But don't worry, geothermal is not a perpetual motion scheme. Geothermal is not breaking this rule because it is not converting energies. It is moving the earth's heat that is stored in the outside ground into your homes air. So the efficiency is a comparison to how much electrical energy you would get if you directly converted it to heat, to the heat you would get if you used that same amount of electrical energy to move the ground's heat into you home. So lets say you have a 1000 watts space heater. When you plug this in the wall you get 1000 watts of heat, that is 100% efficient. Now lets instead use that 1000 watts to move the heat from the outside ground in to your home's air. You would get 3000 watts to 4000 watts of heat with the 1000 watts you invested. My home used to use propane for heating. You can guess what I have now.
1 gallon of LP gas = 91,500 BTUs
Electric rate = $.10 / kw-h
LP rate = $2.00 / gallon
(.10 $/kw-h) / (3413 BTU/kw-h) = .0000293 $/BTU
Standard 80% eff. Furnace: 91,500 BTU * .8 = 73,200 BTU (useful heat)
.0000293 $/BTU * 73,200 BTU = $ 2.14
Geothermal @ 350% eff. $2.14 / 3.5 = $0.61(better than 1/3 the price of LP)
.0000293 $/BTU * 86,925 BTU = $2.55
Geothermal @ 350% eff. $2.55 / 3.5 = $0.73
Good for the environment: If at all possible I like to act in a way that is best for the environment. Since you are not burning gas or oil to heat your home you will not be creating pollutants or carbon dioxide. Now the electric utility will be using some type of energy to generate the electricity. But even if they are burning coal this is still less of an impact on the environment than if you burn gas directly. As mentioned above you are only using less than a third of the energy to move the heat rather than to create heat directly. Here 92% of the electricity generate by ComEd is from nuclear power. This only produces water vapor from their cooling towers, so there is no air pollution.
Other alternative types of heat are a pain: I have tried many types of heating. Propane was always the main source but I have supplemented it with wood heat and corn heat for the home. In my shop I even built a waste oil burner (used crank case oil). All of these have large drawbacks.
Solar Energy: On a warm summer day have you ever thought how great it would be if you could bottle up that heat and keep it for the winter. Well in a sense that is exactly what you are doing when using geothermal heat. The bottle is the earth that holds the heat. In the winter you are just moving that heat into your home. So in a sense geothermal is a type of solar heating. Directly heating with solar energy in this area is not very effective because there is not a very high percentage of sunny days in the winter. There is always the problem of storing the heat for when it is needed the most at night.
ECONAR has been around since the early 1980s. Their headquarters is in Maple Grove Minnesota, just north-west of Minneapolis. Their manufacturing facility is in Appleton, Minnesota. This is on the western side of the state near where the Dakotas meet. I think the fact that they are located in central Minnesota is a big plus. Minnesota people know cold weather first hand. The design of their equipment reflects this. It is optimized for cold weather. When we size a unit for your home it will be sized to 100% or near 100% of your heat load requirements. This means less or no use of the more expensive resistive heating. Other manufacturers are more geared toward warmer climates. They usually size their equipment to just part of your heating load. For the colder days resistive heat is used (remember this is 100% not 300% to 400% efficient). Most of ECONAR's business is in the northern United States but about 17% of their sales is even further north up in Canada.
For more information on Enertech click on: www.enertechgeo.com,
For more information on the ECONAR heat pumps click on: www.gogogeo.com,
From reading the above you probably sense that I am very excited and dedicated to the use of geothermal heating and cooling. I have been factory trained at ECONAR and believe in the system enough to put it in my own home. My background before starting the heating and air conditioning business was in electronics, maintenance and engineering. The geothermal heating is an eloquent and simple concept but must be sized and fine-tuned for each job. Correctly installing and sizing this type of system is much more critical than a gas type furnace. The ground loop type, size and placement must be carefully considered. The heating and cooling load of the building must be calculated and the air flow capacity of the duct work must be correct. When you decide to go with A Polar Bear Air I will spend many hours determining the requirements of your home and designing the most cost effective and efficient system for you. First a heating and cooling load for your home will be determined. All the walls, ceilings, windows, doors will be measured. Things like insulation, direction of the walls, types of siding and even number of people are noted and entered in a "Manual J" program. From this the heating and cooling BTUs are determined. This is then entered in a program designed by ECONAR to determine how much money you will save with each type of system. This is a great way to weigh out the options. I will go over the data with you to choose the best system for you based on performance, comfort and price. We then determine the ground loop type and placement. At this point we are ready to install the ground loop. The ground loop will be pressure checked to make absolutely sure it doesn't leak. Then the heat pump itself will be installed. The whole system must be purged of any air. A special high volume/head pressure pump is used to do this. Once the heat pump is started I spend the time to fully measure and check it to make sure it is doing its job, heating your home efficiently. The ground loop temperatures and pressures are checked. The flow of the water is determined to make sure it is within specifications. Also the static pressures and temperatures of the air going in and out of your heat pump are checked. The voltage and current draw of the unit is also checked. I believe in equipment running to design specifications. If I find anything not quite right and I don't understand the problem, I will be on the phone with the experts at ECONAR to make it right.
I think the best way to give you an ideal of what is involved in the installation of a geothermal system is to go through the installation of my own system.
Earth loop: Since I don't have a lake or an endless supply of ground water this narrowed the choice down to a vertical or horizontal closed earth loop. Now here the choice is fairly easy. If you have the room the horizontal loop is the lowest cost. This is because excavating a large hole (about the size of a basement) cost a lot less money then drilling (same as well drilling) several bore holes. My house required a four tons of heating load. So this would require four bore holes. To drill each hole is about $1700 (this is an average cost, this is dependent on the ground type and formation) plus getting the line to the house. So we are talking about $7800. The horizontal loop hole cost about $1500 total plus about $500 to trench to the house. Now there is less material with the vertical loop so we can take about $1000 off that price. So we are comparing $6800 vertical to $2000 horizontal. See what I mean, an easy chose if you have the room. Now the room I needed with the horizontal loop was 25 feet wide by 85 feet long . There also has to be room to put the dirt so about twice to three times this would be nice. The vertical only requires a hole about every 15 feet and room to bring the drill rig in. So about everyone would have room for a vertical loop but you need about an 1/8th of an acre open spot to put the horizontal loop in. I did have the area where I grow vegetables so that is where the horizontal earth loop went. Now one other consideration which is usually not a problem in this area is the soil. In this area the horizontal loop needs to be at least five feet deep (I made my 6 feet as an added safety margin). If there is solid rock at that depth the vertical loop is then the only choice.
The desuperheater which will supplement your hot water can be connected to your main hot water tank through the drain connection. I used an electric water heater as a buffer tank (electric elements not connected). It will be used for the desuperheater and feed an electric resistive tank that will heat it the rest of the way if needed. This allows colder water to go into the desuperheater and to use the geothermal for a little higher percentage of my hot water.
a) Voltage at heat pump: 232 v
b) Current at heat pump: 20.6 amps (this current has dropped over time of use)
c) Loop pressure and temperature on in port: 40 psi, 43.3 degrees
d) Loop pressure and temperature on out port: 28 psi, 38.5 degrees
e) From above pressures flow is determined : about 11 gpm
f) Static pressure and temperature of supply: .15 in wc, 115 deg
g) Static pressure and temperature of return: -.07 in wc, 80 deg
h) Heat rise from above temperatures: 35 deg
a) Static pressure and temperature of supply: .17 in wc, 50 deg
b) Static pressure and temperature of return: -.06 in wc, 71 deg
a) Temperature of water in: 63 deg
b) Temperature of water out: 80 deg (later as the tank is warmer this will increase to 125 deg)
a) Current: 18.3 amps
Price: As an example of your expected cost a system installed like the one in my home would cost about $12,000. You are probably thinking this is a lot of money, and it is. But remember that the yearly savings is $2000. So this will be paid off in 6 years and then in another 20 years I will be $40,000 ahead. If at that time I need a new heat pump (life 25 to 30 years) I can use a small part of that savings to get it. Remember the next one will only cost a fraction of the original cost because the earth loop is already there (200 year life expectancy). Another way to look at it is if you were to get a loan for the $12,000. An 8 year loan for $12,000 at 7% interest will have a payment of $163.60 per month or $1963 per year. In my case the payment is less than what I will be saving each year so I am paying nothing extra. After 8 years I will be $2000 ahead a year.
Well maybe not quite a no brainer but if you weigh out all the benefits I think you will find this is the best way to keep your home comfortable both economically and ecologically.
Update March 2013, I can honestly say in the 8 winters (and summers) that I have had my geothermal system I am at least a couple thousand dollars ahead of my cost compared to savings now. I just took a look at my electric bill for January, I used about $100 in electricity for heat during the coldest month of this winter. The proof of the pudding is in the eating!
If you have any questions at all please give me a call. If you would like to see my system I would be more than happy to have you over. If you would like to know how much you can save on your heating cost I can help you with that also.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I am usually not a very wordy person but I wanted to give you a real sense of what geothermal is, its benefits and what is involved to install a system. Hopefully I have raised some excitement in you about geothermal heating. As you can tell I am excited about it.
A Polar Bear Air
(815)544-5424
apolarbearair@gmail.com
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