3 ms·

Installing a ground loop is a _significant_ expense, oftentimes well beyond the reservation price for residential buyers.

• earleybird 5y ago
  In my neighbourhood, ground source is triple the cost of air source. Got quotes for both about 3 yrs ago. We don't have the option for horizontal so ground source would have been 3, 50 meter deep bore holes arrranged in an equilateral triangle 7 meters between points.
• ericd 5y ago
  Yeah, the ground loop is a really big chunk of the overall expense, I think it was $20k of the cost by itself for our most recent quote, but it's expected to last 50-100 years, so it's amortized over a loooong time period of significant energy savings and increased performance over an air-source heat pump. Home buyers probably won't properly account for that when you're reselling, since it's not visible in the same way a remodeled kitchen is, but hopefully they'll start to as it becomes more common and/or energy prices increase. Also, there are a lot of tax credits - 26% of the entire cost this year as a federal tax credit if you install this year (decreasing to 22% next year), and a number of state and local incentives bring the cost down significantly. And there are obviously financing options available. If you combine it with a large solar array, I think the biggest thing it brings you is reducing uncertainty about future bills - you're locking in your expenses, a little like what buying a house does vs renting.