Geothermal for new construction and retrofit

the earth gives us many things metal minerals plants but did you know it can also give us energy as well in fact energy from the earth or geothermal energy is one of the first forms of renewable energy that people used meet Tom rutkowski he installs geothermal heat pumps in all types of homes old homes newer homes and even homes that are just getting constructed with proper maintenance geothermal heat pumps can last a long time we have a pretty cool opportunity for you today right now we're in a geothermal pit and Tom how far down in the earth are we about six to eight feet on average is that typically how far you dig yeah for a geothermal pit system we want to stay below the frost line and we Jen like to do a couple more feet down just be sure in case we get a hard no winter where it's gonna go a little deeper all right now let's talk real basic terms on what a geothermal system is and what we see around us here sure so a geothermal system is basically a unit that will sit where you'll typically see a furnace in a home that system will either extract or reject heat from the house into the ground you'll see behind us the loops going through I generally like to explain it as a typical system condenser sitting outside for a home rejects all that heat up into the air with a geothermal system we do it more efficient efficiently through our loop system with a methanol solution and it gets an average about two to three times the efficiency okay now this house obviously is being built from the bottom up does that make your job easier it does make it a little easier more dania pit like this just because the earth is already gonna get disturbed anyway they're gonna have to come back in and rough grade it regardless if somebody were doing a retrofit where we're taking a furnace and air out and put it in geo probably won't be the way to go because you have to replant reseed in that type of scenario we bring in our horizontal boring machine and go underneath the house or not disturb the earth as much however this type of application does save the customer usually a few thousand dollars on average the work outside the home is just one part of a geothermal heat pump with new home construction you can take advantage of other aspects of geothermal energy like running pipes for in floor heating so once you've finished all of this work outside is there a particular area in the home where everything's linked together there sure is so each of these loops you see behind us here we're gonna bring in individually into the mechanical room and then manifold them on the wall there so if something will ever happen you just ball valve the one off and yes I'll have heating and cooling interesting let's talk about efficiency of the system how efficient is geothermal compared to a traditional system sure so on a conventional system on the air-conditioning side without getting too crazy with your spending you're gonna hit probably between 16 and 18 seer on a geothermal system you're gonna be averaging anywhere from 30 to 36 seer so you're gonna be a little over doubled and then on the heating side you know a furnace is going to be about 96 percent efficient geothermal they measure it with a co P so you're from will say 4.5 to 5 co P what I look away to is about a third of the energy cost for your heating considerable savings spend absolutely you may think you need a large yard to install a geothermal heat pump in an existing home but tom says that's not the case in this home tom is running the pipe work to the side of the home they dig a pit so they can watch the pipes drill deep into the ground but sometimes they hit a snag oh there's plenty of strange thing as we come across you know when you come in to an older home there's always little goodies buried throughout the yard random septic tanks that were abandoned old cisterns that sort of thing but once the digging is done then the challenge becomes connecting it all up inside the house so things are going to be a little different as compared to a conventional system you're going to see the manifold we're going to have all their pipes coming up in it'll manifold and then go straight to the unit where they furnace is sitting that's where you're going to see your package geothermal system the ductwork is going to look very similar we'll tie it all back in so it looks just like a furnace and the evaporator coil on a normal home now talk to us a little bit about the cost for installing a geothermal system compared to a traditional heating and cooling sure so a conventional system for new home construction you're gonna average about twelve to fifteen thousand dollars depending on what you put in and that's including you know putting in the infrastructure the ductwork that goes along with this with geothermal we're gonna be about ten thousand more for the contract because you are putting loops in the ground for that initial investment however with utility rebates and tax incentives brings it a little closer to about a five thousand dollar more than conventional and then in addition we see that your home value is gonna actually go up about ten to twelve thousand dollars on average how that's significant and the energy savings right huge we did a study before the Home Show had actual customers call and give us our utility numbers here for a fifteen hundred square foot home people were averaging about fourteen to fifteen hundred for the utilities for heating cooling and hot water for the year I'm geothermal there are about four to five hundred that's incredible thanks Tom no problem many utility companies offer rebates for the installation of a geothermal heat pump check with your utility company to find out if you qualify and if you'd like more details on how a geothermal heat pump works visit our website at powerhouse tv.com

Channel: AEPowerHouseTV

Views: 364,816

Rating: 4.7984204 out of 5

Keywords: geothermal energy, energy efficient heating, geothermal heat, geothermal system, geothermal installation

Id: DX2RkuE4Vuk

Length: 5min 33sec (333 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017