bkrukow

I bought my house 10 years ago and it had a elchepo no name heat pump on it. There is no backup heat on it so they had base board electric heat thrugh out the house to heat it when it was below 25deg out(all winter). I dident like the fact that the base board heat cost me over $300 a month and if it droped below 0 outside I couldent get it much above 55 in the house. I put a corn burner in 6 years ago and the first year it only cost me $200 to heat the house ALL winter. That was with corn at $1.30 a bushel and now corn is at around $7.50 and climbing like a rocket. I had been using the heat pump for the last couple months now that its warm enough to work properly and today it quit. I called the HVAC guy here in town and he said that the compresor siezed up and they dont make parts for it anymore. I am looking at at least $5k for a Lenox relacment unit big enough to heat my masive house. I relay dont like the "cold" heat that my freinds and inlaws houses have with there new heat pumps. They constantly complain abought how cold it is in there house and how expensive it is to run the unit in the dead of winter when the backup heat has to do the work. That got me to thinking abought geothermal heat. I know its more expensive up front but then there is almost noheat bill at all when you are done so it will adventualy recoup some of the additonal costs. That and the curent 30% tax rebate on geothermal costs make it a LOT more atractive to me rite now. I have only been able to do abought 30 minutes of reserch and I figured somone on here has to have one so lets hear your input. I wana know how ya like it how much it cost to run and such. Any untold isues they dont tell ya abought till after you have it installed.

This is a unit(brand) that has caught my eye sofar.
http://econar.com/
http://econar.com/howitworks.htm

Watch the videos on this companys web site. They install the econar brand and go threw an install and give a an idea of how they work.
http://www.sbgeothermal.com/sbgeothermal/index.jsp


Any and all input apreciated. Am I nuts or is it worth the expense? Speaking of expense if ya have one and dont mind sharing, how much did it cost all said and done?

j-fox

Three years ago I had a climatemaster 4 ton installed. I love it.
It was calculated as a 5 1/2 year payback.
Mine has auxilary heater. I believe it comes on at 17 degrees.
The highest electric bill I have had was $400. and that includes heating a new shop with electric water heater--in floor heat!
I keep it set at 74 in house and the shop at 58.
It did cost $13,000.
I was on propane and it was costing $350 a month at 64 degrees.
My installer teaches geo-thermal at a com. college and has been excellent at my few questions. He told he what issues other are having. Most inportant they scimp on enough capacity.
It really shines with the cooling! It can drop my home temp 10 degrees in 20 minutes.

It is the only heat I will consider from now on.

cbrahs

when growing up we had a hot spring. pops built a 120' long shop by 60 feet wide. had over 5000 feet of 1" pvc pipe in the floor. pumped hot water thru the floor of the shop. with 30 below outside, inside the shop was still in the high 70's. when we built the house, we did the same thing. electric bill for the pump was pretty cheap. Less than $50 a month for the house and the shop.

jumper

I would consider a GHP only if there was a LOCAL installer with a proven track record. The local soils, climate, ground temperatures, and your heating requirements are critical to determining the coil length and poor coil to ground contact (installation and installer experience and attention to detail) or too short a coil length and you'll have problems. Problems can occur with a too short coil sucking all the heat out of the ground. Then you've got no heat. You DEFINITELY want an installer who's had success with your local climate and soils.

Do you have the outdoor space for the coils, or will you have to do vertical boreholes? You don't want to cannibalize your septic repair area, for example.

Find out if the installer recommends supplemental (strip) heaters like your electric heat pump has. If so, is that to cut down on coil length, or just why?

Will the GHP deliver "cold" heat like conventional heat pumps? If so, is that a deal breaker for you?

Get or make an accurate assessment of your payback time vs how long you need it to pay back and conventional heat.

Is the Air Conditioning side a bonus, or must have? If you don't need it, be sure that fact is considered in your payback calculations. Don't let them include in the payback calcs all the money you'll save on Air Conditioning, for example if AC is not needed.

FiverBob

We had geothermal in our last home. However, we live in Florida so we don't have snow laying on the ground and 30 below. We had 13 tons of AC, two wells and pool and the highest summer electric bill was about $350. We didn't use it much in the winter, but when we did, it was super. With a high ground water in the Florida, it makes installation quite easy.

The advice to know your installer is important - - he has to know how deep, how much, what soils and make sure of how it is plumbed into the unit so you don't have frozen pipes. Sure saved a bunch of money compared to my neighbors - - they were all jealous of our electric bills.

Bob

bkrukow

Thanks guys. I do have the room for a system but almost prefer the idea of vertical boreing so that i dont have to wory about future diging isues. I would like to do a shop some day in the back yard and dont wana have to wory abought placement because of loops running threw the back yard. I also do need that AC. Here in Iowa it is normal to be around 85-100% humidity all sumer and well into the 90s for a long time and not unheard of to top 100 on a hot year. The system I linked to above does not need any form of backup heat at all. It will do 100% of the heating requirments for a house. There is a dealer 8 miles from my house as well but i have no idea how experianced they are. I will have to go talk to them. I was on a walk to the park last nite with the family and noticed the house rite next to the park had just had some line boring done and had a slew of pipes sticking out of the ground. I asume it is for geothermal so i may have to go beat on there dore and start asking questions.

JD730

My parents house had a Water Furnace installed in 1996, its an open loop system running off a single well, the well is 425 feet deep, pump at 120 and return at 400. It has supplemental heat to satisfy the power companies rebate requirements, but the are not activated and have never turned on. Only problem they've had with it was the fan seized up and was replaced under warranty. The installer was top notch, I helped him on that job, very meticulous.

Like everyone else has mentioned, I would only have a competent installer do the work.

Quick story involving another installer and the guy that installed ours.
The neighbor wanted to install ground source heat pump and asked up about it, recommended who we used and she got a quote from him. And a quote from another outfit that had no reputation in this area. His quote was a little higher and against other's recommendations they went with the cheaper quote. Long story short, it was a complete disaster, vertical loops kept leaking and they kept bypassing them, pretty soon no loops. End result, the new owners had the same guy that did our work install air sourced heat pumps so they at least had AC.