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I had a "geothermal" heat pump put in to my house via Google's Dandelion and it works great so far. It's been -30F at my house but the ground sourcing renders t

by lxmorj 8y ago

I had a "geothermal" heat pump put in to my house via Google's Dandelion and it works great so far. It's been -30F at my house but the ground sourcing renders that moot. As far as I can tell their innovation was going vertical so they didn't need to dredge up a huge loop of land. The pump has two channels that go down 300ft each and the fluid runs down and back up each bore hole. It provides heat (working great so far), hot water (but I already had an electric inline heater, so I can't speak to the slow-refill issues), and A/C in the summer. I'm curious to see how well the AC performs!

WhompingWindows 8y ago
Is your house entirely electric? That's a dream of mine but I don't know how realistic it is, especially in my state where there aren't good incentives
- lxmorj 8y ago
  No, we have a propane fireplace that used to heat the whole house (terribly inefficient, the previous owners used it as a summer-only property) and we now run that just on colder evenings to make the house a bit cozier. We also live way out on a dead-end of the grid, so outages are common and sometimes long enough to need backup heat to keep the pipes unfrozen. I also eventually want to swap out my electric stove with propane, though my last experience with induction stoves has me considering them too. Electric conduction stoves just aren't fun to cook on... I'd love to convert the fireplace to run on hydrogen that I create myself via electrolysis one day (and have 0 emission tiki torches on the porch) but I'm not sure how safely I could pull that off! It's a bit of a moot point until I get solar installed anyways, since my power isn't coming from a clean source as it is.
jonny_eh 8y ago
I don't see Google mentioned anywhere on their site. What's the relation? https://dandelionenergy.com/ https://dandelionenergy.com/
- lxmorj 8y ago
  Alphabet spinoff, looks like: https://dandelionenergy.com/about/ https://dandelionenergy.com/about/

by lxmorj 8y ago

WhompingWindows 8y ago

Is your house entirely electric? That's a dream of mine but I don't know how realistic it is, especially in my state where there aren't good incentives

lxmorj 8y ago
No, we have a propane fireplace that used to heat the whole house (terribly inefficient, the previous owners used it as a summer-only property) and we now run that just on colder evenings to make the house a bit cozier. We also live way out on a dead-end of the grid, so outages are common and sometimes long enough to need backup heat to keep the pipes unfrozen. I also eventually want to swap out my electric stove with propane, though my last experience with induction stoves has me considering them too. Electric conduction stoves just aren't fun to cook on... I'd love to convert the fireplace to run on hydrogen that I create myself via electrolysis one day (and have 0 emission tiki torches on the porch) but I'm not sure how safely I could pull that off! It's a bit of a moot point until I get solar installed anyways, since my power isn't coming from a clean source as it is.

jonny_eh 8y ago

I don't see Google mentioned anywhere on their site. What's the relation? https://dandelionenergy.com/ https://dandelionenergy.com/

lxmorj 8y ago
Alphabet spinoff, looks like: https://dandelionenergy.com/about/ https://dandelionenergy.com/about/