Geothermals Top 10 Takeaways


If your knowledge of geothermal heating and cooling is limited, you ought to know this, at least – especially if you’re considering retrofitting your current Pine County home’s HVAC system or pondering what to put into the new home you’re having constructed:
  1. Geothermal HVAC systems are among the most environmentally friendly available. Their relatively uncomplicated technology makes use of subterranean temperatures to furnish your Pine County home with winter heat and summer cooling. Thus, your home and the earth are always in sync, joined together in a unique – and uniquely coordinated – home-earth symbiosis. Sound a little too flowery? All it means is that, with geothermal heating and cooling, your home isn’t upending the natural order of things. Instead, it’s becoming a “nicer” part of the environment.
  2. Geothermal HVAC systems qualify as “renewable energy technology.” Certainly, they run off of electricity. But they don’t need much of it for all the benefit you get. Just one unit of electricity can transfer as much as five units of natural heating or cooling from the earth to your home.
  3. Geothermal HVAC systems are significantly more efficient than solar (photovoltaic) or wind power setups. In truth, solar and wind technologies, whatever the draw of their “renewability,” consume four times more kilowatt-hours of electricity per dollar spent than geothermal systems.
  4. Geothermal HVAC systems don’t require as much of your yard as you might think. Don’t have much yard space in the first place? No eye-opener there: most home lots in Pine County and elsewhere anymore occupy a relatively compact the polyethylene piping used for the geothermal earth loops doesn’t have to be buried horizontally. It can be dug in vertically and extended to a depth of anywhere from 100 to 400 feet. Very little above-ground surface is called for at any rate, whether vertical, horizontal, open (well water), or pond loops are installed. Result? You can keep your little patch of paradise a whole lot greener.
  5. Geothermal HVAC systems are remarkably quiet. Every aspect of a geothermal system is designed and engineered to perform much quieter than traditional gas furnaces, heat pumps, or air conditioners. Even better, there’s no outside unit, so you and your neighbors areen’t subjected to the annoyance of fans, belts, and compressors whirring, whining, and clattering away at all hours!
  6. Geothermal HVAC systems are durable heating and cooling solutions, built to last for generations. Modern geothermal technology, manufacturing guidelines, and installation procedures insure ground loops of extraordinary longevity and heat-exchange equipment that will keep working perfectly for decades. It helps, of course, that the heat-exchange equipment is protected indoors. At least, when it does ultimately have to be repaired or replaced, it’s not likely that you’ll be redoing the ground, well, or pond loops along with it. So replacement costs can be kept down.
  7. Geothermal HVAC systems don’t demand much maintenance at all. The earth loops, as mentioned, are designed to last for generations, and when properly buried, will do so without any need for intervention. Fans, compressors, and pumps, safeguarded indoors from weather extremes, need only infrequent scrutiny as well as periodic filter changes and a coil cleaning once a year.
  8. Geothermal HVAC systems are as adept at cooling as they are at heating. The old notion that geothermal HVAC systems don’t cool as well as they heat has been essentially buried by ongoing improvements in the manufacture of geothermal technology.
  9. Geothermal HVAC systems can be customized to multitask. Okay, so you’ve chosen to heat your home’s water geothermally. But can a geothermal system provide ambient heat for your home too? And what if you have a swimming pool? Relax. Today’s systems can handle it all and handle it simultaneously, with no favoring of one task over another.
  10. Geothermal HVAC systems are becoming increasingly affordable – even when not subsidized by federal and local tax incentives. Congress has yet to bring back federal tax credits for geothermal heating and cooling that terminated December 31, 2016. Nevertheless, a number of factors – material and technological enhancements, new installation practices, and increased competition in the marketplace, for the most part – are helping to bring geothermal solutions more in line with the cost of conventional heating and cooling methods.
 
Talk with the geothermal specialists at Willow River Geothermal today. They’ll clearly outline the benefits of geothermal heating and cooling so you can make the right decision for your Pine County home.
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