General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: $67,000,000,000 pissed down a rat hole [View all]RC
(25,592 posts)"Geothermal" sounds so much more cooler and greener than "Ground Source Heat Pump" GSHP sound like you are are pumping the bilges or something. Yuck, who needs that?
And they can then charge more by calling it the exciting, scientific, sounding Geothermal.
Iceland uses geothermal heating. Most places in the US, it is way too expensive to get to the heat, even for industry.
The place where I worked had a ground source heat pump. There were two 300 foot wells for the ground source side. The fresh air fiends insisted on opening the windows too many summers in a row. That caused the A/C to run a lot more than designed. The ground around the wells got to be heated so warm, the air conditioning stopped working. It couldn't pump any more heat into the ground. They had to add a large (noisy) double fan radiator outside to cool the circulating water enough for the A/C to work. The first winter we tried keeping the windows open to suck enough heat out of the ground for the A/C to work the following Summer. No go. Even with the added radiator, when it got hot outside, it was a struggle to keep up. But up till then, the system worked great.
Kinda defeated the ground source concept. Something to keep in mind.
When heating or cooling a building, keep the damn windows closed.