What You Need To Know before getting Geothermal Heating and Cooling

We are about to have a vertical system installed by Dandelion in fact the drill rig will be here on Friday Aug 13th (yeah the old superstition). We are located close to Kingston NY and after a small heating oil leak decided to get out of the fossil fuel business! We checked out mini splits but found the maintenance on 6 interior units to be excessive not to mention the holes in the house walls for the refrigerant and drain lines. Dandelion designed a 5 ton system which requires two holes for the vertical loops. The house is 1920 sq ft and has an open design. We also had to replace the old hot air duct system as it was small and made from ductboard. After seeing the condition of the ductboard it was money well spent! Will update this comment after the drilling and install.

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YOU ARE DOING GREAT THINGS ! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

Wow, so much great information. Thank you very much.

Outstanding breakdown. Thank you!

I just had my pool (5.5m wide x 13m long x 1-3 m deep) removed and filled in. I very much wanted to lay down some loops, probably could have had 2 levels in the deep end. But even though the excavation was "free", I don't think I could have gotten more than a ton of capacity in that area, or in any event as much as I would need for my ~330m2 house. Also, I think the inspector and contractor would have made things difficult. Finally, even if that all shook out OK, maybe I would never use it for whatever reason. My other thought was just run some simple loop to cool a decent volume of air that I could bathe my AC condenser in when it's on. Would just be a small fan. But again, inspector and contractor would not want the hassle of understanding where I was coming from. In the end, I think it was some lost opportunity, but would have been not worth it or even be possible.

Very helpful! A weird aside, as someone that works on TV sets, the weird changes in lighting, coupled with the jump-cuts on this video are fairly disconcerting.

I think a civil engineer and you're general contractor determining how to dig the hole would disagree that it does take up a considerable amount of space during construction. You'd need to actually get the machinery into the area you plan to dig which is critical. Good financial modeling tho!

Very interesting and useful. Thank you for sharing :)

I have a friend that purchased a house with a geo thermal unit he has had the compressor replaced ever 7 years and replace the unit once he hasn’t saved a dime after 20 years he is finely thinking about going back to natural gas

How the excel sheet has calculated the breakeven point, Break even point is when the energy cost savings equal the amount of the upfront cost but here it is calvulated using the energy cost equals the upfront cost? I might be wrong with my concept, Can you have the explaination for it? Thank You for wonderful video!

Great explanation. In the long term I think geothermal will win out on costs as economies of scale kick in reducing both the equipment cost and drilling/trenching services. Seeing how close it comes now while both are still fairly niche makes this almost a certainty.

I live in Ohio. My propane furnace and A/C system are nearing the end of their lives. I am looking at Geothermal so this video was very helpful.

Good video, with just the one common mistake of calling “ground source heat pumps” geothermal - geothermal energy extraction is the big, industrial scale type used for power generation using steam turbines in volcanically active places like Iceland or Yellowstone. Lots of good points in the video, though, and the costs breakdown, while US specific, do give a reasonable relative indication for other parts of the world.

Your example location, Colorado, spends most of its energy budget on heating and not so much on cooling. But what of a desert area, such as Arizona, New Mexico,, Nevada, Texas, and high sierra areas of California? Yes, the desert gets cold at night, so heating is required, but cooling is often more than half the budget. How do the numbers work out there?

thank you for sharing.

Great video! Does your break-even calculation take into account ever-rising electricity costs (at least in certain areas)?

Do you have any comparison models for the north east/Connecticut?

FAQ 4 ...how much space is needed...(in my home)? What about outside for horizontal loops?