Geothermal unit
 

Major heat wave the past few days killed 4 of my freshwater hatchetfish, the temp was 31 outside.

I am thinking about a geothermal unit which is essentially a heat exchanger with piping buried in the ground and recirculated into your house to heat the house in winter and cool it in summer.

Anybody have any experience with these?

One of the best and most expensive ways to go (innitial cost)

if you do the work your self it can be quite cheep. basicly you dig a bunch of trenches, lay down PVC pipe and glue it all up, and then cirulate water through it. have this go to one side of the heat exchanger which is inside the house ans then plumb your tank water into the other side.

I was working in the yard on friday and I was wondering what the average temp in my septic tank was as that would be way to easy to put a coil into that :mrgreen:

Steve

You got enuff coils in there already dont you think Steve ? :eek: :razz: :mrgreen:

ya but how do I run the water through them :wink: :mrgreen:

seriously though if it wasn't so discusting it is a concreet tank burried 2 feet below the surface that holds 1500 gal of water. I would think it would remane a stable 68ish temp and have more than enuf cooling capability for any tank most of us have.

Steve

OK I researched it a little more on the net and it looks like you can't just retrofit your house with a geothermal unit. These units require different ducting with a higher capacity than regular heating ducts in your house. So maybe I will just go with regular aircon, cheaper to install but more expensive to run.

I have installed residential heating and airconditioning for 8+ years, geothermal is great, but like you said it is pricey to start out with, the low monthly bills are great though....
When I build, I will be going geothermal, I am thinking of going geothermal for our garage in our current house(garage will be a fish room) lots of tanks to heat and cool.....

oh I was under the impression you only wanted to cool your tank water... sorry didn't realize you wanted to do the whole house. you can use exzisting ducting with them (I have been looking at going to central air myself.) the only difference between a normal central air and geothermal is the part outside the house. depending on how they do the GEO part (dripping well holes and running tube, burring lines, or running them into a lake, the price can be very different.

Steve

I read that you need a larger ducting for the geothermal units. The reason is that the temperature differential between your house air and the heated or cooled air from a geothermal unit is less than the temperature differential using a furnace and aircon unit, so you need higher flow of heated or cooled air to make up for less temperature differential.