Geothermal Heat Pump
You probably rely on an air conditioner to cool your home in summer. In winter, you may turn to a high efficiency gas furnace or boiler. Both systems are functional ways to manage temperature discomfort, but what if you could simplify your system with a single heating and cooling solution?
What is a heat pump?
There are a lot of similarities between heat pumps and conventional air conditioners. Both use a chemical refrigerant to extract heat from a building interior. This lowers the temperature to comfortable levels, but a heat pump can go a step farther.Unlike an air conditioner, a heat pump can draw heat from outside your home and pump it inside. This allows the heat pump to provide heating during cold weather conditions.
It’s a flexible option many homeowners enjoy in mild seasons.
How It Works
Geothermal heat pumps do four things for your home.
They:
How Do Geothermal Heat Pumps Work?
How does a geothermal heat pump operate more efficiently than a conventional air conditioner or air-source heat pump? The key is environment stability. A typical air-source heat pump absorbs the heat inside your home to make it cooler. Pretty simple. It reverses this cycle to heat during cold weather. It’s, essentially, pulling heat out of the air, then pumping it inside.Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of ambient exterior heat in the middle of winter. A geothermal heat pump does not rely on a medium as unstable as outside air in order to do its job. Instead, geothermal units work through an underground loop network to deliver winter heating and summer cooling. You might not realize it, but the ground a few feet beneath your shoes is a very stable environment. Underground temperatures vary little from season to season no matter how hot or cold it gets on the surface. This means that a geothermal heat pump always has a stable exchange medium to draw heat from in winter. And So
A geothermal heat pump can heat and cool at a fraction of the energy a previous generation air conditioner or air-source heat pump would need. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy determined a typical geothermal installation can pay back its installation cost through energy savings in as little as 5 years.
Why Geothermal Heat Pumps?
You’re in the market for a new heating and air unit. You’ve heard geothermal heat pumps are supposed to be great. But are they really better than conventional HVAC solutions?Geothermal heat pumps rely on buried heat to boost operating efficiency. The underground loop allows a unit to maintain even heating capacity no matter how low the aboveground temperature may drop.
This translates into substantial energy savings compared to a conventional electric heating unit.
How much can they save?
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates a typical geothermal installation will pay back its installation cost in 5 to 10 years. This may sound like a long time, but consider the ground loop.
The ground loop itself is the most expensive component to install, and is rated for decades of service. With a little regular maintenance, a geothermal heat pump can save money for years and years.
It can save even more when you combine it with a 30% Residential Energy Tax Credit.
Not Just Money
Geothermal heat pumps deliver more than just financial relief. They’re also a great way to reduce your home’s overall carbon footprint. If you’re interested in green initiatives, a geothermal HVAC system is a step in the right direction.And let’s not forget that geothermal heat pumps produce outstanding air comfort in summer and winter. You get one home HVAC system to deal with all your seasonal air discomfort problems. You don’t have to meddle with a separate air conditioner or furnace. You can even integrate your home hot water system into the geothermal network with an attached desuperheater. In short, geothermal heat pumps deliver real benefits compared to regular HVAC systems.
So, what about the geothermal part?
You probably rely on an air conditioner to cool your home in summer. In winter, you may turn to a high efficiency gas furnace or boiler. Both systems are functional ways to manage temperature discomfort, but what if you could simplify your system with a single heating and cooling solution?
What is a heat pump?
There are a lot of similarities between heat pumps and conventional air conditioners. Both use a chemical refrigerant to extract heat from a building interior. This lowers the temperature to comfortable levels, but a heat pump can go a step farther.Unlike an air conditioner, a heat pump can draw heat from outside your home and pump it inside. This allows the heat pump to provide heating during cold weather conditions.
It’s a flexible option many homeowners enjoy in mild seasons.
How It Works
Geothermal heat pumps do four things for your home.
They:
- Shrink the carbon footprint.
- Reduce energy consumption.
- Deliver all-season air comfort.
- Save money.
- These are, obviously, great things. Who doesn’t want to save money?
How Do Geothermal Heat Pumps Work?
How does a geothermal heat pump operate more efficiently than a conventional air conditioner or air-source heat pump? The key is environment stability. A typical air-source heat pump absorbs the heat inside your home to make it cooler. Pretty simple. It reverses this cycle to heat during cold weather. It’s, essentially, pulling heat out of the air, then pumping it inside.Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of ambient exterior heat in the middle of winter. A geothermal heat pump does not rely on a medium as unstable as outside air in order to do its job. Instead, geothermal units work through an underground loop network to deliver winter heating and summer cooling. You might not realize it, but the ground a few feet beneath your shoes is a very stable environment. Underground temperatures vary little from season to season no matter how hot or cold it gets on the surface. This means that a geothermal heat pump always has a stable exchange medium to draw heat from in winter. And So
A geothermal heat pump can heat and cool at a fraction of the energy a previous generation air conditioner or air-source heat pump would need. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy determined a typical geothermal installation can pay back its installation cost through energy savings in as little as 5 years.
Why Geothermal Heat Pumps?
You’re in the market for a new heating and air unit. You’ve heard geothermal heat pumps are supposed to be great. But are they really better than conventional HVAC solutions?Geothermal heat pumps rely on buried heat to boost operating efficiency. The underground loop allows a unit to maintain even heating capacity no matter how low the aboveground temperature may drop.
This translates into substantial energy savings compared to a conventional electric heating unit.
How much can they save?
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates a typical geothermal installation will pay back its installation cost in 5 to 10 years. This may sound like a long time, but consider the ground loop.
The ground loop itself is the most expensive component to install, and is rated for decades of service. With a little regular maintenance, a geothermal heat pump can save money for years and years.
It can save even more when you combine it with a 30% Residential Energy Tax Credit.
Not Just Money
Geothermal heat pumps deliver more than just financial relief. They’re also a great way to reduce your home’s overall carbon footprint. If you’re interested in green initiatives, a geothermal HVAC system is a step in the right direction.And let’s not forget that geothermal heat pumps produce outstanding air comfort in summer and winter. You get one home HVAC system to deal with all your seasonal air discomfort problems. You don’t have to meddle with a separate air conditioner or furnace. You can even integrate your home hot water system into the geothermal network with an attached desuperheater. In short, geothermal heat pumps deliver real benefits compared to regular HVAC systems.
So, what about the geothermal part?
A non-geothermal heat pump is usually called an air-source heat pump, because they use the air as a heat source. By contrast, a geothermal heat pump, sometimes called a ground-source heat pump, uses the Earth itself as the source. You might not know it, but, no matter how hot or cold it is on the surface, the temperature only a few meters underground rarely fluctuates. Geothermal heat pumps rely on this stability to provide energy efficient heating and cooling all year long.Long Term BenefitsWhat that all means is that a geothermal heat pump is one of the most cost effective home heating and cooling solutions available. They last for years, deliver terrific air comfort, and do so more efficiently than virtually any other HVAC system.It’s HVAC simplicity with benefits.
