Geothermal heating

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(12 November 2012, 10:24)Scythe13 Wrote: There are 2 basic types of geothermal heating. You can have a bore hole drilled and have heat taken from there, or you can have a snaked coil buried just a few inches or feet (can't remember which) just under the surface of your lawn....covering your whole lawn.

The most amazing part of geothermal technology....it's pretty old! As old as a fridge/freezer. No joke.

Why is the back of a fridge hot, while the inside is cold? The energy (heat is just energy) from inside the fridge is extracted by the coil inside the fridge, and transferred to the coil on the back of the fridge, where the heat is dissipated to the air, which explains why inside your fridge is cool, while the back is hot/warm.

Some of you have probably figured out a fun thing to do. But for those that have not worked it out.....this is how geothermal systems work. The inside of coil of the fridge is the one under the lawn, or down the borehole. While the back of the fridge coil is the one providing your home with under floor heating!!! Technically, it would be possible to recreate the effect using fridge components! But I have no experience in this as such. My experience with this, is mainly theory, until we can get our own place, and I'm allowed to rip up the garden....and fridge!

Hi S13

Yep that's exactly what I'm looking at .

Geothermal is just heat pumping either from a vertical bore or from under the lawn. The governing factor is how much heat you can harvest at given depths....and of course we want maximum harveting capability in winter months.

Both systems heat pump manufactures quote 3 to 4X heat multiplication factors so 8 c ground temeratures will deliver 24c to 32c usable heat.

The heat exchangers consist of compressor and pump like in a refrigerator. These require power to run. The idea is that you harvest more energy from the ground than you expend in extracting it. Various sources give the sane 3 to 4.5 fold multiplier. To to rin a 6Kw system, electrical power to turn the Heat Pum would be between 2kw and 1.3Kw.

With energy prices rising thisproposition looks more and more interesting.

With a PV systen generating enough winter (15%) prower to rin the heat pump, heating becomes almost self sufficient.

System life of 20 years + is predicted.