Imagine a home in which
the temperature is always comfortable, yet the heating and cooling system is
out of sight. That system performs efficiently but doesn’t require extensive
maintenance or knowledge on the part of the owners.
The air smells fresh;
you can hear the birds chirping and the wind rustling lazily through the trees.
The home shares energy with the earth similar to the way the roots of the trees
exchange the essentials of life to their leaves and branches. Sounds
comfortable, doesn’t it?
Geothermal heating and cooling
makes that vision a reality. Geothermal HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air
conditioning) brings a building in harmony with the earth beneath, taking
advantage of subterranean temperatures to provide heating in the winter and
cooling in the summer.
How Geothermal Heating
and Cooling Works
Outdoor temperatures
fluctuate with the changing seasons but underground temperatures don’t change
as dramatically, thanks to the insulating properties of the earth. Four to six
feet below ground, temperatures remain relatively constant year-round. A
geothermal system, which typically consists of an indoor handling unit and a
buried system of pipes, called an earth loop, and/or a pump to reinjection
well, capitalizes on these constant temperatures to provide “free” energy.
(Note that geothermal
HVAC should not be confused with “geothermal energy,” the process by which
electricity is generated directly from the heat inside the earth. That takes
place on the scale of utilities and uses different processes, normally by
heating water to boiling.)
The pipes that make up
an earth loop are usually made of polyethylene and can be buried under the
ground horizontally or vertically, depending on the characteristics of the
site. If an aquifer is available, engineers may prefer to design an “open loop”
system, in which a well is drilled into the underground water. Water is pumped
up, run past a heat exchanger, and then the water is returned to the same
aquifer, through “reinjection.”
In winter, fluid
circulating through the system’s earth loop or well absorbs stored heat from
the ground and carries it indoors. The indoor unit compresses the heat to a
higher temperature and distributes it throughout the building, as if it were an
air conditioner running in reverse. In summer, the geothermal HVAC system pulls
heat from the building and carries it through the earth loop/pump to
reinjection well, where it deposits the heat into the cooler earth/aquifer.
Unlike ordinary heating
and cooling systems, geothermal HVAC systems do not burn fossil fuel to
generate heat; they simply transfer heat to and from the earth. Typically,
electric power is used only to operate the unit’s fan, compressor, and pump.
A geothermal cooling and
heating system has three main components: the heat-pump unit, the liquid
heat-exchange medium (open or closed loop), and the air-delivery system
(ductwork) and/or the radiant heating (in the floor or elsewhere).
Geothermal heat pumps,
as well as all other types of heat pumps, have efficiencies rated according to
their coefficient of performance, or COP. It’s a scientific way of determining
how much energy the system moves versus how much it uses. Most geothermal heat
pump systems have COPs of 3.0 to 5.0. This means for every unit of energy used
to power the system, three to five units are supplied as heat.
Geothermal systems
require little maintenance. When installed properly, which is critical, the
buried loop can last for generations. The unit’s fan, compressor, and pump are
housed indoors, protected from the harsh weather conditions, so they tend to
last for many years, often decades. Usually, periodic checks and filter changes
and annual coil cleaning are the only required maintenance. So if you are
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