The Truth about Geothermal Heat Pumps 2024🔥🤔

in this video we're going to talk about the truth about geothermal heat pumps we're going to cover everything from tax credits to installation costs what it takes to actually install a geothermal system why you might consider one and why you might consider passing because there's a lot of things there's a lot of information out there that might make them sound good on paper but there's a lot of things that if you don't consider they might not actually be the best system for your particular situation and if you're tuning into this channel for the first time and you haven't done so already please make sure you smash that like button and consider subscribing to the channel it's a great way that you can show your support and it is much appreciated it helps us out a lot with the algorithm and is again just a great way that you can support the channel if you found this content helpful now the first thing I want to talk about with geothermal systems is just a general explanation of what geothermal is and how geothermal heat pumps work a heat pump essentially is just an air conditioner with a reversing valve and what that means is that your air conditioner outside in the for when it's a heat pump it actually just has a reversing valve inside of it that reverses the flow of refrigerant and instead of sending cold air inside your house sends hot hot air inside your house well the same is true with a geothermal heat pump because a geothermal heat pump can do both Heating and Cooling however they work typically on a hydronics basis which means through the exchange and what hydronics means essentially is heating or cooling through water and I'll or a hydronics loop which really just means a fluid and I'll explain what fluid goes inside of a hydronics loop for a geothermal Loop and what design considerations are important to consider but if you're in the market for a geothermal heat pump and you're wondering you know what it costs to get installed or how they work essentially the way that a geothermal system works is instead of having an air conditioner or a heat pump condenser that is sitting outside and that is transferring heat in and out of the refrigerant to send it or remove it from inside your home which is how an air conditioner works or a heat pump works a geothermal Loop instead ties into a hydronics loop or a loop or series of Loops that are transporting a fluid through a loop that is in the ground now this fluid fluid is typically going to be a glycol or some sort of antifreeze but essentially what it does is instead of having an air source heat pump outside that is pulling fluid from you have your hydronics lines coming into the home and at the actual heat pump inside your home is where the heat transfer is taking place between the fluid now there's a pump that pumps that fluid through the geothermal Loops that are going to be drilled into the ground and I'll talk more about the drilling Loops later and what goes into that but as it sends fluid back out to the ground outside and it goes typically 300 ft deep into the ground recirculates back up and comes back into your home what it's actually doing is it's picking up heat along the way and then the heat pump inside is actually transferring heat back into that fluid and it sending cold fluid back out into the ground and essentially that is where it is picking up heat or that fluid is picking up heat and then coming back through the return back into the heat pump starting that process all over again and that's how it's pulling Heat out of the ground so it's not that you're actually heating with the ground but what you're doing is you're creating an environment where instead of the the reason air source heat pumps aren't as official efficient in very cold climates is that let's say you live in northern Canada for example where it might get down to -40° F or 40° C which fun fact -40 is the same in both Celsius and Fahrenheit what would happen is that an air source heat pump just isn't going to keep up in those climates it's not going to be efficient it's not going to be pulling heat out of the air effectively in a way that's meaningful and efficient to run and so it's going to be cheaper and more efficient to run something based on a gas powered Source or propane in general potentially even electric resistive heat if that's all you have access to now the reason geothermal is efficient is because the geothermal Le Loop essentially the ground does not get as cold as the outdoor air temperature so even though it might be -40° on the surface when you go down 300 ft deep it could be 60° or 50° ground Temp and still warm enough to where you're pulling a significant amount of heat out of that ground Loop so one of the best environments for geothermal systems is when you're off grid because when you're off grid or you're in an environment where your only source of heating is going to be expensive things like oil or propane a lot of times it can make sense to instead spend the money upfront on a geothermal heat pump installation because you're going to be saving money on your monthly bill in the long run because the C which stands for coefficient of performance on a geothermal system is much higher and I'll explain why in a second now one of the downsides of geothermal installations is as you can probably tell from how I'm explaining the design of these systems drilling deep cores into the Earth is very expensive and as a result this is going to add to installation costs and therefore the payback period right now in the United States there's a 30% tax credit which means if you spend $100,000 on a system you could get $330,000 as a tax credit that you can use in one year and so that significantly brings down cost of the system but it's still very expensive by comparison with an air source counterpart or a furnace counterpart however if you're going to be using propane or oil in the case of like an oil fired boiler by comparison this is where geothermal starts to make sense because you're off- grid so you typically have access to a big area of land that so you're able to drill these geothermal loops and tie them in and two even if you're not on solar the cop of a geothermal heat pump even when it's very cold outside can be as high as 5 6 7 or eight which what that means is a cop of eight means that it is eight times as efficient as an electric heat Source like an electric space heater the reason I say I use that for layman's terms to keep it simple is because a space heater has a coop of one because it is one watt of heat in one wat of heat out in a heat pump rating scale the cop or coefficient of performance is basically looking at Heating in the same way to where if you have a heat pump and running that compressor gives you per one watt of energy consumed you get 8 watts of heat energy out that would be a cop of eight now the cops go up and down based on the outdoor Ambient Air Temperature cuz that does affect the ground temperature still a little bit but the difference with geothermal systems is that because you are pulling heat from the ground versus the air the cop chart is much more steady so when it gets down to -40 it still might be at a coop of 5 whereas when it's at 20° fah outside it might be a CO P of six or seven or eight so it's not as drastic of a drop off and they can still maintain efficiency and be efficient to operate in extremely cold climates and this is why they work great in cold climates Off the Grid applications where you only have access to expensive heating sources like propane or electric oil fired systems as well now one of the other things I love about geothermal systems is that geothermal systems because they're a hydronic based form of heating is that they can also provide your domestic hot water so a geothermal heat pump can tie into a hydronic heat pump pump like a sidearm or an indirect fired water heater and heat your house off of that same Loop that you're using to heat your home and cool your home and the amount of Versatility that you get with a geothermal heat pump is such that it allows you to tie into a forced air hydronics air handler and that can do both heating and air conditioning and like I said being able to tie into another loop that provides domestic hot water for things like showering and bathing and your hot water that you get at the faucet that's what domestic hot water means and in addition you can even tie it into things like radiant floors so you can literally heat and cool your home have radiant and floor heating and tie it into your domestic hot water all through a geothermal high efficiency heat pump system and that type of Versatility is the reason that geothermal are a good option in some situations now where we install a lot more geothermal heat pumps is going to be like I said in these off-grid locations in Colorado the places that we get most inquiries for geothermal type of applications is going to be systems in the mountains in places like Boulder or Netherland or someplace where they're off the grid this is going to be where you have you several acres and you're able to drill these loops and and set up system and it is very common in places where like I said your only options are either electric an expensive resistive heat or propane and if you're at a higher elevation where you just don't get as good of efficiency through an air source heat pump or because it gets colder which still air source heat pumps even work in the mountains here in Colorado a lot of times people will still go for the geothermal options especially when we're incorporating them into a radiant inflor heating type application because people who have radiant inflor heating typically those are powered by a boiler or even though it's a high efficiency boiler if you're on propane that's still going to be more expensive to operate than an electric geothermal heat pump now one of the things that you want to be aware of is when you're going through geothermal you want to really work with a company that knows what they're doing when it comes to drilling now one of the reasons we stayed away from geothermal for a while was we don't do any Drilling and so it wasn't until that I found a company that was reputable that we could work with that did the drilling on our behalf and they specialize exclusively in drilling they warranty the loops for 60 years or I think it's 55 years actually but the bottom line is they say these Loops have a life expectancy of 60 years plus and so they last a very long time and so when it comes time to replace your heat pump the downside to a heat pump by comparison with let's say a cast iron boiler for example is cast iron boilers have a very long life expectancy cast iron boilers at least the new ones typically we call for a 30 or 40y year life expectancy we've pulled out cast iron boilers that were over 100 years old at the time that we pulled them out so we've experienced a cast iron boilers lasting a very long time however they're not as efficient but this isn't as big of a deal unless you are in one of these off-grid applications where you're running on propane in which case you probably don't want to put in a cast iron boiler just because they're so much more expensive to operate when you're paying what you are pain to heat with propane by comparison to putting in a geothermal setup now there's a couple other things I want want to talk about when it comes to geothermal heat pumps before we do that if you haven't done so already please make sure you smash that like button and again consider subscribing to the channel if you're enjoying this content so far it takes a lot of time and energy to put out content like this and liking and subscribing is a free way you can show your support and it is much appreciated and if you have additional comments please post them in the comment section below or if you have questions let us know what type of project you're working on because we're always curious what our subscribers are interested in hearing about and want to put out content that's relevant to you so if you haven't done so already please consider posting a comment and letting us know what you think or give us your two cents or ask a question and we will do our best to respond to that question and use it to make future content ideas now one of the things that you might be wondering about is what type of Maintenance goes into a high efficient or a heat pump or a geothermal heat pump type of application the short answer is they can be a little bit more high maintenance than a traditional force a system however break down basically some of the things that cons have to be maintained on on these periodically one is going to be that the fluid some sort of hydronic fluid like I said normally it's going to be some sort of propoline glycol that's ran through the loop you're not going to run water through a geothermal Loop just because if it gets below freezing your whole Loop is destroyed so you're never going to run water in a geothermal loop at least nothing I'm familiar with the exception to this is going to be you can run them through a stream now this is a different type of geothermal but you can there's open loop and then there's also closed loop systems we don't do any open loop systems so I have zero experience with this so if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to open lose systems that's because I don't know what I'm talking about but I know enough to be dangerous and at least inform you on what they are if this is a route you want to go you're going to talk to a contractor that knows what they're talking about anyways you're not going to hire us for this but an open loop system might be let's say you have a lake on your property or a big pond or like I said you have a stream running through your property you're going to be actually be able to pull water from that Loop and your heat pump is actually going to pull heat out of that water and even if that water is 40° that's still enough for a heat pump uh to op operate and then dump cold water back out the other loop so the intake temperature might be you know 40 or 50 and the cold water that's going back to the stream maybe 35° like I said I don't know anything about open loop systems so I'm not the expert to ask on that but that is another type of system that's available so if you do have a large body of water on your property that is something that you can consider if you are going the route of geothermal other than that if you have a Clos loop system just keep in mind that something that you might have to do periodically is change out the hydronic fluid but other than that the maintenance guidelines for a geothermal heat pump are pretty similar to most air source heat pumps and if it's tied in with radiant INF floor heating it's going to be very similar as well to what you might have with a boiler because of the fact that you know periodically zone valves and things like that control a hydronics loop for the hydronic piping in your house those tend to break so things like air eliminators and the different wear and tear items on a boiler system which are separate from a geothermal heat pump that's like I said the going to be the hydronics loop inside your house those are going to require some wear and repir and replacement but the bottom line is geothermal can make an excellent option especially for people that are going solar and I'll mention that briefly and the reason is because your geothermal heat pump runs on electricity and so if you're on solar you can literally heat and cool your house completely off the grid from solar panels especially when you start incorporating things like battery backups or a Tesla power wall so if that's something you're interested in doing often times geothermal can be a great solution for your particular application and if you happen to be in one of the areas we service like Denver Colorado or Phoenix Ariz a you can actually schedule an appointment with us for free we come out for free for all first-time customers whether that's for a service call or annual maintenance or if you're just looking for an estimate for system replacement and there's actually a link in the description below where you can actually schedule online at your convenience as well as an update list of the cities and states that we service so you can stay up to date when we start servicing your Metro and right now there's a few other videos popping up on the screen that YouTube thinks you should watch so make sure you check those out if you haven't done so already and we will catch you on the next episode

Channel: The HVAC Dope Show

Views: 13,548

Keywords: heat pumps, heat pump, inverter heat pump, inverter AC, daikin fit, daikin AC's, daikin furnaces, inverter ductless, high efficiency AC, high efficiency heat pump, HVAC, heat pumps in 2024, best heat pumps, howard bynder, best hvac 2024 hvac systems, hvac reviews, the bee heat and ac, cold climate heat pumps, heat pumps cold weather, geothermal contractors denver, geothermal heat pumps, geothermal enertech, nordic heat pumps, gree flex heat pump, geothermal hvac

Id: MlrTwULd1R8

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024