Tackle Water Heating and Pool Heating With Your Geothermal Heat Pump

You may already know that a geothermal heat pump warms and cools the air in your home utilizing clean, renewable energy up to four times more efficiently than a conventional HVAC system. But did you know that same geothermal heat pump can also be used to efficiently heat household water and even your swimming pool? A geothermal system absorbs latent heat from the ground just below the surface of your property and conveys it to a heat pump to be concentrated and then dispersed into your home.

In summer, the process reverses and heat extracted from the home by the heat pump is dispersed into the ground. Adding a desuperheater option to your geothermal heat pump allows it to do the same thing for water that it does for air. A desuperheater is an auxiliary heat exchanging device that transfers surplus heat from the heat pump to household water. After being heated, hot water is conveyed into your water heater tank to reduce dependence on gas or electricity.

At times when the heat pump is not extracting sufficient energy to produce the residential standard of 120-degree water, the desuperheater functions as a pre-heater with gas or electricity contributing supplemental heat. A desuperheater can also heat swimming pool water. In a typical configuration, hot water from the desuperheater flows to an insulated holding tank.

Circulating pumps activated by a pool water thermostat add heated water from the tank to the pool as necessary to maintain the desired temperature. Water heating savings from utilizing a desuperheater vary by season. During summer, when the heat pump can apply all heat extracted from the home to the desuperheater, water heating is essentially free. In winter, when less surplus heat is available, the desuperheater pre-heats water and relies on gas or electricity for additional heat. Winter savings average about 50 percent.

Sobieski Services provides the latest in geothermal heat pump sales and service, including efficient options for heating water. Our goal is to help educate our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC & plumbing systems).

Image Credit: Caviness Landscape Design