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You've got a fairly large heat sink right under every house. The trick is to "wire" into it during the build. Stick a geothermal heat transfer unit and run wate
by balabaster 12y ago
You've got a fairly large heat sink right under every house. The trick is to "wire" into it during the build. Stick a geothermal heat transfer unit and run water pipes under the ground where the earth maintains a constant year round temperature. Use this to control the climate along with decent insulation and you'll dramatically reduce your climate control costs.
Ideally, if you can build your entire house below the frost line, you're laughing - but this isn't always feasible.
- Retric 12y agoThat can be a good option when you need both winter heating and summer cooling, but ground source heating tends to be surprisingly expensive. Not to mention many houses sit on bed rock. My understanding is if you live near a stream or pond it's a great way to make heat pumps far more efficient, but otherwise just having a large rock slab in the middle of your house combined with solar heating is far cheaper for heating, but not that useful for cooling if your area does not cool off at night.
- balabaster 12y agoIf you live near a river/stream, depending on the depth, flow and head (gradient drop) you can also use that for power generation. If it's not that deep, it'll only be useful for this in months where it's not frozen solid, but if it's deeper, then you'll still have flow under the ice to drive your turbine. In the winter however, wind tends to be more prevalent, so you can use a wind turbine to generate more power. Of course, all this is reliant on knowledge of the local geography and climate before you purchase and get set up. If you're limited to where you are right now, you're kind of stuck with what you can put on your property right now. Which could be as limited as running on-grid but growing your own food.