Almanor Energy Plus, Inc. uses the highest quality products to insure your installation will be trouble free for years. We use Climate Master, GeoComfort and WaterFurnace products for our Geothermal installations.
Here’s some basic information about Geothermal.
A geothermal heat pump (GSHP) is a central heating and/or cooling system that pumps heat to or from the ground . Heat pumps move heat from one place to another – from outside to inside a home, for example.
Simply put, it works like this: All heat pumps have an outdoor unit (called a condenser) and an indoor unit (an evaporator coil). In the winter the normal heat pump system extracts heat from outdoor air and transfers it inside where it is circulated through your home’s ductwork by a fan.
Geothermal heat pumps are similar to ordinary heat pumps, but instead of using heat found in outside air, they rely on the stable, even heat of the earth to provide heating, air conditioning and, in most cases, hot water. In the winter, they move the heat from the earth into your house. In the summer, they pull the heat from your home and discharge it into the ground.
Studies show that approximately 70 percent of the energy used in a geothermal heat pump system is renewable energy from the ground. The earth’s constant temperature is what makes geothermal heat pumps one of the most efficient, comfortable, and quiet heating and cooling technologies available today. While they may be more costly to install initially, they can produce markedly lower energy bills – 30 percent to 40 percent lower, according to estimates from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who now includes geothermal heat pumps in the types of products rated in the EnergyStar® program. They are mechanically simple and outside parts of the system are below ground and protected from the weather.
Here are the typical loop configurations:
Horizontal Ground Closed Loops
This type is usually the most cost effective when trenches are easy to dig and the size of the yard is adequate. Workers use trenchers or backhoes to dig the trenches three to six feet below the ground in which they lay a series of parallel plastic pipes. They backfill the trench, taking care not to allow sharp rocks or debris to damage the pipes. Fluid runs through the pipe in a closed system. A typical horizontal loop will be 400 to 600 feet long for each ton of heating and cooling.
Vertical Ground Closed Loops
This type of loop is used where there is little yard space, when surface rocks make digging impractical, or when you want to disrupt the landscape as little as possible. Vertical holes 150 to 450 feet deep – much like wells – are bored in the ground, and a single loop of pipe with a U-bend at the bottom is inserted before the hole is backfilled. Each vertical pipe is then connected to a horizontal underground pipe that carries fluid in a closed system to and from the indoor exchange unit. Vertical loops are generally more expensive to install, but require less piping than horizontal loops because the Earth’s temperature is more stable farther below the surface.
Pond Closed Loops
This type of loop design may be the most economical when a home is near a body of water such as a shallow pond or lake. Fluid circulates underwater through polyethylene piping in a closed system, just as it does through ground loops. The pipes may be coiled in a slinky shape to fit more of it into a given amount of space. Since it is a closed system, it results in no adverse impacts on the aquatic system.
There can be any number of variations of looping configurations. You can research loop systems at the Geothermal Heat Pump consortium’s website: http://www.geoexchange.org
Although they are less applicable to California, there are other loop systems. These include an Open Loop System in which ground water is pumped into and out of a building, transferring its heat in the process; and Standing Column Well Systems, which can be up to 1,500 feet deep and can also furnish potable water. In a few places, developers have installed large community loops, which are shared by all of the homes in a housing project.
Reference: geoexchange.org. This is an excellent non-profit site for indepth information regarding the geothermal industry.