Curious About Replacing Your HVAC System With Geothermal?
Geothermal heating and cooling is not exactly new. Ancient Romans exploited geothermal sources of hot water for residential heat. Now, advancements in modern technology make geothermal a reliable source of clean, efficient home comfort control. Today, over a million homes in the U.S. utilize geothermal heating and cooling and 60,000 new installations are completed annually.
What Is Geothermal?
Everyone knows how air temperature varies with the seasons here in Delaware. What’s less well known is the fact that just a few feet below ground, the earth maintains a consistent temperature of about 55 degrees year-round. This free heat can be extracted by a geothermal system and utilized to warm your home.
How Does It Work?
An arrangement of plastic tubing known as an “earth loop” is buried on your property to absorb latent heat from the earth. Circulating pumps convey heat transfer fluid through the tubing and back to an indoor heat pump that concentrates the heat in a compressor cycle. A heat exchanger then disperses it into existing ductwork to warm the house. In summer, the system works in reverse. Heat extracted from the house by the heat pump is conveyed back to the earth loop where it is reabsorbed by the earth.
What Are The Benefits?
- A geothermal system utilizes no combustion and consumes only the electricity required to run the blower, circulation pump and heat pump compressor.
- Typically, geothermal systems reduce heating costs by up to 70 percent and cooling costs up to 40 percent.
- Geothermal systems are quiet, long-lasting and have no outdoor components exposed to elements. Buried loop fields have manufacturer’s warranties for up to 50 years.
- Environmental benefits include no emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. On a national basis, geothermal systems eliminate nearly 6 million metric tons of CO2. The absence of combustion also eliminates combustion by-products from the home including dangerous carbon monoxide gas.
Sobieski Services offers the cutting edge in clean, efficient geothermal heating and cooling technology. Our goal is to help educate our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC and plumbing systems).
Image Credit: James Jardine