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Supposedly it helps cut down around 50% of your energy costs for heating and cooling by using the earth's stable temperature in the deep dirt and water pumps to circulate. Anyone know if these are good systems and if I can use them on an outdoor pond to prevent freezing?
My ex and I put one into a house using well water for the geothermal transfer. It worked fine and was cheap to heat/cool. But very expensive to put in. I don't know how long it lasted but heat pumps are notorious for not lasting a long time (5-10 yrs) - we only had the house for 4 years. If we had dug in the pipes for ground transfer, it would have been even more expensive to put in. He dug a big pond for it but it never filled. We did have discharge water at 55F so the dog always had unfrozen water.
The short pump life is a direct result of not having the system maintained at least once a year...even better is twice. I don't know where 5-10 years comes from about compressor life spans but I have seen many heat pumps last well over 20 years. A exceptional instillation is a must if you want your system to work correctly and last a long time.
Remember when you ask question and get negative responses (not saying anyones complaints aren't justified) You don't usually get responses from the folks that are happy.....only the complaint.
There are Geothermal systems rated up to 30 SEER. To give you an idea on cost your $100 month electric bill for a 10 SEER system would be closer to $33 for the 30 SEER system.
You can read about geothermal here: WaterFurnace - Smarter from the Ground Upâ„¢
Des Moines Geothermal Heat Pump - Bell Brothers (http://www.bellbrothers.com/geothermal.html - broken link)
Geosyndicate (http://www.geosyndicate.com/GHP/pages/heatpump.html - broken link)
How big is the pond? It takes 1 btu to heat up 1 lb of water 1ºF. If the pond is lets say 20,000 gallons you multiply 20,000 by 8.33 for the weight which comes to 167,000 lbs. So you would need a system that over comes that probably something in the neighborhood of 200,000 btu's which is huge. You would be better off using other means to heat a pond that size. If it's a smaller pond it might not be to bad.....It would just depend on the actual size of it.
I'm not saying Tesaje didn't do everything correctly just to clarify that. Each has their own experience.
Not sure where you plan on trying to keep your pond from freezing, evilnewbie, but in southern Ontario the preferred method of keeping ponds or mooring areas clear of ice is air bubblers.
We have had geothermal for 15 years in NE Ohio. The furnace brand is "Waterfurnace". Our coil runs down the side of our lot, although it could have been buried straight down, or submerged in our pond. (Our pond is about 12' deep in the center and does not freeze down there). The system is all electric forced air heating and cooling. Our monthly budget billing has been in the $160. to $185. range for 2800 sq ft house. We LOVE it. Never had a bit of trouble with it..we have an annual maintenance check. I think it cost about $3000. extra to have it installed for new contruction, and I have heard it is more expensive to put it into and existing house.
I shud have been clearer. I didn't keep the geothermal house long enuf to know about the durability. The bad experience with heat pumps I had was with a regular one. So it may be different with the geothermal one. An extra $3k sounds about what we paid extra for ours but we didn't do digging to lay pipes in the earth. It was really important to get an installer who knows what they are doing with it.
I don't know how long it lasted but heat pumps are notorious for not lasting a long time (5-10 yrs) - we only had the house for 4 years.
I don't know where your getting your information from, but I have a Geothermal system that's 17 years old and they can last up to 30 years or more. You may be mixing up your heating systems. A heat pump takes the heat out of the air (even freezing air has some heat in it) and uses that heat to heat your home. The life expenctancy for a heat pump is only about 15 years tops. A geothermal heat pump extracts the heat from water and can last 30 years or more. The only thing that can damage a geothermal system is the water that goes into it, there have been problems where the ground water that was used for the geothermal system was corrosive in some way that lead problems with the system. If the well water in your area is not good for a geothermal system, then you should go with a close loop system.
As for perventing a pond from freezing, the return water from my system feeds some ponds, so when the system is on, there is always running water going into it.
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