Geothermal home heating is a wonderful concept. It involves the use the heat that is stored in the earth to provide the heat for your home. Geothermal heating involves a larger startup cost than most home heating remedies; however based on its environmental friendliness as well as its lack of use of fossil fuels and more efficient in the long run. Of course one must take into consideration the amount of work that will be required in order to heat your home in this way. However once that bridge has been crossed and the initial cost has been taken care of, one will be able to sit back and enjoy the benefits geothermal heating and cooling.
When considering geothermal home heating the first thing that one must realize is that it is much easier to partake in this venture when doing new construction as opposed to adding it on to an existing structure. Reason being is that you want to have the pipes that will be running underground for your heat to be located under the structure that they will be heating since that would produce the shortest route for the fluid to travel when heating the home. The primary design for this type of system is known as the closed loop and requires that the pipes under the home be buried at least 2 meters or 6 feet in order for you to get the most efficiency from your geothermal home heating unit. The pipes would then run through your home and through a heat pump to provide the heat to your home. You could of course also use a blower system as well to help in the distribution of the heat. In this closed loop system the pipes are all connected and form a continuous loop throughout the home. The fluid contained in the loop would be a mixture of water and antifreeze in order to help maintain the flow.
One could also install thermostats throughout as well as shutoffs in the system to aid in the direction of where the heat flow would go in the geothermal home heating system. In essence the thermostats would be used as regulators to determine if the room required more fluid pumping through it or if the flow could stop and the heat pump would not be required to work as hard. You see the water or fluid that is running through the system would only reach 55 degrees F when passing through the ground. This would require that an additional source be used to aid in heating the fluid in your geothermal home heating unit as well.
In essence the geothermal home heating system is simple yet expensive to install. It can be very cost effective for all seasons as well. Reason being that the temperature 6 feet down is consistently 55F so therefore there would not be any real cooling costs in the summer however that would offset the need for and additional source of heat for the water in the geothermal home heating system in the winter.
