Anyone out there have experience of geothermal method for heating home? We are looking at installing a geothermal unit; just a little scared of taking out the old boiler entirely! (We already have solar hot water heating to one half of the house, and generate up to about 5kw via PV panels) The worry would be a winter start for some reason - can understand that maintaining a comfortable heat continuously needs less of a surge in energy, but it is hard to imagine the system being able to produce enough in taxing conditions?

Additional Details

4 months ago

Naturally I have gogled it, and know about the theory and have visited a demo site. What I am hoping for now is someone who either uses, or knows someone who uses such a system, so I can evaluate the reality with the theory!

Best Answer

not me personally but where i live, in my country, it is a very expensive procedure but all of those people who did this in their home said that in long run it is a lot a lot a lot cheaper in long run! it will be warm in your entire house. so i say go for it

Asker's Rating:

Thanks; I am getting more and more tempted to go for it.

Other Answers (2)

• Google it.
• I think there are two ways of using geothermal energy.
  
  1. If you actually live near a geo-thermo zones like Japan, Iceland, part of USA that has many geysers or hot springs where you can just pump directly from those sources as your %26quot;heat source%26quot;.
  
  2. This is more like using earth as a energy sink. Since the earth temperature is relatively constant throughout the year, you basically move your %26quot;exchanger%26quot; of your heating/cooling units to the ground. It is usually about 10 ft below the surface. Where people would lay pipes that carry the coolant and either let it release heat to the earth for cooling or %26quot;absorb%26quot; heat from the earth for heating. Those systems usually require an A/C/heat pump system with a specially designed heat exchanger that are a network of pipes installed into the ground.