Well there is not to many bad things to say but there are a couple. The first problem is the costs of these systems. They run 5-10k in equipment and another 5-10k installation costs. Most of this is from drilling or digging involved to put the piping in the ground needed to get the desired temperature both in the summer and winter for your house. Because of these costs, and the marginal savings a pay back period of 10-15 years is very common. Other problems are pumps burning out. This isn’t a huge problem but will costs a little bit of money to fix when it happens. I have not heard of any environmental problems cause by heating up or cooling off the earth around the piping in the ground. This is due to the large amount of pipe that gets buried, the transfer of energy is very low spread of that distance of pipe.
One last thought is if everyone switch to geothermal heating, there would be a need for a lot of installers for the initial rush of orders, but over a long time period less work, maintenance would lead to less jobs in the energy sector. Everyone can safely agree that if there were no more need for power plants, or even only have the current demand there would be a lot of people out of work.
Rate Heat Pumps
June 13, 2009
Bad Things about GeoThermal Heat Pumps
September 13, 2011
2011 Heat Pump Reviews
2011 and energy prices are still high. We have another heating season coming up for half of the country and more choices to make on how to heat our homes. I recently had my sister install a heat pump at her house. She was looking at installing central A/C and the installer suggested installing a geothermal vertical loop heat pump. The cost was less then $2000 more then installing the A/C along as half of the parts are about the same. Although they are slightly different and a vertical loop of tubing and pump is needed so the choice was easy. She installed had the heat pump installed. I will be tracking her utility bills this winter and will compare against last years. This will give me some real life energy savings and dollar savings and give a very accurate picture of a heat pump pay back period. Also the tax benefits for installing a heat pump in 2011. Look for more updates as the temperatures keep dropping outside. It is installed near Detroit in a 2000 sq ft home that is aprox. 17 years old.
June 11, 2010
Rate Heat Pump Reviews
Heat Pump Reviews
Geothermal heat pumps work under the same principles as a refrigerator. Temperatures of dirt/earth are very stable once you go down a couple of feet, always cool in the summer and warm in the winter, just the first few feet get affected by surface temperature. During winter months you collect this heat and move it into your home. During the summer months you cool your pipes and then cool your home. It’s a pretty neat system once you have it in. There is very little maintenance and the system runs very quiet. These system have a decent up front cost to get installed with usually payback periods ranging from 10-15 years. Depending on your situation the costs will vary.
Some questions that need to be answered before you can get started will be,
How many square feet do you plan on heating/cooling?
What temperature do you want to heat or cool this space to?
What is your current cooling/heating source?
How much do you pay per month and maintenance for your current system?
How much loss does your current system have?
RateHeatPumps.com has come online. We will be adding articles and reviews along with open discussions on geothermal heat pumps. I will cover a lot of the topics and help out but this is a large project and many resources
to organize. I will really appreciate any input from people who own geo thermal heat systems. I will be looking for some help on orginizing links for different states on there tax rebates for geothermal heating. Every little bit helps when pricing and installing these heating systems. Stay tuned with more coming. This will include major heat pump manufactures and model reviews, tax information, installing geothermal heat pump systems, maintanence, ratings, payback periods and many more topics. Thanks to all who will help us along the way.