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I have to replace one Ac unit and figured might as well do the furnace at the same time both are 25 years old but then started hmm and hawing about geothermal. I was wondering if anyone else may have had one installed and if so what was the cost?
My house is about 2500 sq ft and we plan on staying here 20 more years unless I get hit by a bus knowing my luck.
Guy I know in Ohio did the Direct Exhange geothermal system. More efficient than the standard. His avg electric bill monthly is around $100 but half of that is the other stuff like TV, fridge, stove, washer and dryer etc.
Quick Answer? I'd be exceptionally surprised if your payback would be quick enough. The cost of drilling the wells is usually far more than could be saved.
I'm an engineer who does the energy and economic evaluations and designs for the HVAC of commercial and institutional facilities.
The payback of a system is the math that yields the number of years it takes for the increased savings to balance the additional cost. (Plus a few other things like maintenance differentials and age to replace).
Geothermal has very low maintenance costs and is typically pretty efficient so there's a good energy savings vs a conventional system. It also typically has a long life time before replacement.
And the cost of the inside components are about the same as the conventional components.
However, geothermal it's much, much more expensive overall to install because you also have to pay to dig the wells. Their cost varies a huge amount, depending on the cost of utilities, the soil type, if you have a lot of land and can drill many shallow wells or a few deep ones, if you can use a lake, etc.
The times that I've seen it done have a few common factors. A client who is willing to overlook the extra cost for the PR (environmental) benefits, and/or have an exceptionally expensive utility cost (IE; they are far off the grid), and/or have a very long time-frame of use and/or lots of land and cheap drilling, and/or are in a location where heat pumps are overwhelmed. Usually northern climates.
Local factors also effect this. The cost of electricity and natural gas in this area is quite low. AND the weather more mild as compared to other locations, who might find geo-t economical.
All above comes from my commercial/institutional work. I admit that I've not seen geothermal for residential use in this area and had considered them to be way too expensive for such, but haven't looked or know about any side-factors like tax benefits, government grants etc. I do know that the soil sampling and heat exchanger design is expensive and critical, as is the experience needed by the drillers.
If you really want to look further, see if you could find some residences already built and find who out who did the geo-work. And see if the homeowners would share their 1st costs and utility bills for 5,10 years to verify the math. Then talk to their installers for an estimate of savings and installed cost.
Please do report back here, as others are curious!
Geothermal doesn't make much sense around here due to the very high cost of installation. The energy savings will never recoup that additional cost. If efficiency is your goal, look into inverter variable speed units like this one: https://www.bosch-climate.us/product...it-system.html
We installed two Climatemaster Geothermal heat pumps tied to a single closed loop field of two vertical wells for heat exchange in 2013.
Each pump has two stage compressors with a capacity of 2/1.3 tons upstairs and 3/2 tons downstairs. Also desuperheaters to pre temp hot water. Ecobee thermostats.
System performance has been excellent. Heating/cooling costs roughly halved from before. Deep groundwater temps here around 62F. Entering water temps range from around 40F to 75F. We do have aux heat in the downstairs unit as a backup and to assist if water temps drop too low. Aux heat is hardly ever used.
However - this was done while State and Federal tax credits were still in effect - 30% off Federal and 35% off State. Total system cost was around $33K, after tax credits about $11.5K. I believe the Federal tax credit has been reinstated but the State credit no longer applies.
Payback depends on how you do the math. For us, assuming an $8K cost for air-air units vs $11.5K for the geo units, the $3.5k delta (including tax credits) will take about 7 years to pay back.
I really like the concept of geothermal, but as others have mentioned given the state credit is gone, I think the return on investment compared to just a standard system (heat pump / natural gas) seems just not worth it now.
I don't have exact numbers, but a medium sized solar panel system (5 kW to 10 kW) may provide faster return on investment...
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