WaterFurnace Geothermal Systems and the Benefits They Provide

Consider the advantages of a WaterFurnace geothermal heat pump system for your new home or home renovation project. A geothermal system offers high energy efficiency and long life compared to conventional heating systems using furnaces or boilers. It also provides efficient cooling in the summer.

Heat pumps heat and cool using the same equipment.

In cold weather, they extract heat from outside, either from the air in an air-source system or a heat transfer liquid in a geothermal system, and discharge the heat into the home. In hot weather, the process reverses: the system extracts heat from the indoor air and exhausts it into the outdoor air or into the ground in a geothermal system. In the summer, it can use excess heat for domestic water heating.

A geothermal system is more expensive than an air-source heat pump or a conventional furnace or boiler, but its extra cost is easily paid back due to its higher energy efficiency.

In a geothermal system, a fluid – usually a mixture of water and anti-freeze – is circulated through a loop buried deep enough in the ground to be in the zone where the temperature stays constant all year. In the Mid-Atlantic region, the constant ground temperature is usually in the mid-50s F and is ideal for efficient geothermal heat pump operation. The heat pump extracts heat from the ground loop, so the system can operate no matter how cold the outdoor air may be.

Since the heat pump moves heat from the ground loop to the home rather than burning fuel as a heat source, it operates at an extremely high energy efficiency.

A well-designed and built geothermal system can provide more than triple the amount of heat energy to the building as the amount of electric energy required to operate the equipment. A geothermal heat pump system is inexpensive to maintain and has a long life, with the below-ground equipment lasting as long as 50 years. As a bonus, a qualified geothermal heat pump system will leverage a 30 percent federal tax credit on the purchase and installation, with no upward limit.

Contact us at Sobieski Services and ask about the WaterFurnace brand, a name that is associated with innovative technology and high quality equipment in geothermal heat pump systems. 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: WaterFurnace