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Curious where you are located. I was talking with our high end GC in Texas and they basically said Geothermal for heat exchange never seems to pan out for clie

Curious where you are located. I was talking with our high end GC in Texas and they basically said Geothermal for heat exchange never seems to pan out for clients after the numbers are run. This seemed surprising to me. Some of the other stuff you mentioned came up, we also talked about if homogeneous household temperature was something we cared about because keeping the whole house 68 is way more intensive than having some variance in different spots of the house. Also breezeways are awesome in hot climates.

ip26 6y ago
The claim I have heard is, because the boreholes are such a huge portion of the cost, it comes down to the local talent base for drilling. If you live in an area full of deep rural wells and fracking, the expertise is plentiful. But if you live somewhere with no drilling activity, it will be too expensive. Horizontal loops are much simpler, but require more land area than your typical suburban plot.
cameldrv 6y ago
I think that geothermal works better in more extreme climates. If you compare it to an air source heat pump, the main advantage of geothermal is that the sink temperature is the ground temperature, which is roughly the average of the temperature over the course of the year. In say, Austin, TX, the difference between the average high in August and January is 35.5degF. In say, Chicago, it's 52.7degF. In Austin, the average temperature is 69degF. In Chicago, it's 52degF. The Austin average temperature is essentially room temperature, and the deviation is much less, so the total amount of heating/cooling you have to do is much less, so any efficiency advantage is reduced by the smaller need to heat/cool. This compounds with the fact that the average yearly temperature is closer to the outside air temperature, which makes the advantage of the ground source less. This compounds with the fact that Texas energy prices are some of the lowest in the country, and it makes it a lot harder to justify a big capital expense to reduce these costs.
EricE 6y ago
Yes, I did a lot of research into geothermal when I needed to replace a unit a few years back and there is no way I would have been able to recover the installation costs - even if I lived in the Northern most reaches of Canada instead of the mid Atlantic. Also it's very hard to find contractors skilled in installing the pipe correctly and far too many people had problems where they had to dig up portions of the loops for repairs. If I ever have the chance I will have radiant floor heating. Once you experience it you won't ever want any other kind of heat. The colder it is outside, the better it feels - it's the ultimate luxury IMNSHO.
dhruvkar 6y ago
I'm in the Midwest. Didn't know geothermal was a thing in most places.

ip26 6y ago

The claim I have heard is, because the boreholes are such a huge portion of the cost, it comes down to the local talent base for drilling. If you live in an area full of deep rural wells and fracking, the expertise is plentiful. But if you live somewhere with no drilling activity, it will be too expensive. Horizontal loops are much simpler, but require more land area than your typical suburban plot.

cameldrv 6y ago

I think that geothermal works better in more extreme climates. If you compare it to an air source heat pump, the main advantage of geothermal is that the sink temperature is the ground temperature, which is roughly the average of the temperature over the course of the year. In say, Austin, TX, the difference between the average high in August and January is 35.5degF. In say, Chicago, it's 52.7degF. In Austin, the average temperature is 69degF. In Chicago, it's 52degF. The Austin average temperature is essentially room temperature, and the deviation is much less, so the total amount of heating/cooling you have to do is much less, so any efficiency advantage is reduced by the smaller need to heat/cool. This compounds with the fact that the average yearly temperature is closer to the outside air temperature, which makes the advantage of the ground source less. This compounds with the fact that Texas energy prices are some of the lowest in the country, and it makes it a lot harder to justify a big capital expense to reduce these costs.

EricE 6y ago

Yes, I did a lot of research into geothermal when I needed to replace a unit a few years back and there is no way I would have been able to recover the installation costs - even if I lived in the Northern most reaches of Canada instead of the mid Atlantic. Also it's very hard to find contractors skilled in installing the pipe correctly and far too many people had problems where they had to dig up portions of the loops for repairs. If I ever have the chance I will have radiant floor heating. Once you experience it you won't ever want any other kind of heat. The colder it is outside, the better it feels - it's the ultimate luxury IMNSHO.

dhruvkar 6y ago

I'm in the Midwest. Didn't know geothermal was a thing in most places.