If anyone remembers 2007-08, natural gas skyrocked to $7 bucks or something. There was a shortage we were told and it was going to be more and more expensive to find and extract it. At this time, some of the climate hysteria was frothing up.
I was building a house at the time. I decided to do my part for the environment. I used extra insulation around the slab which is the coldest part of the house and installed geothermal heating and cooling for the basement with in floor heating. Idea was to keep the concrete warm in winter which creates a heat sink for the rest of the house and reduce gas costs by about half.
That winter we fired up the system and ran it for the basement. Worked pretty well so we turned it up even higher to try and heat the top level as well. Later that month I got a power bill for $1000. Turns out geothermal uses a electric motor which runs all the time when geothermal is the main heat source. The system will cool too. Tried it in the summer instead of the AC, got another big bill.
System is turned off now. Gas is like $2 bucks or something. That system cost $20,000. I will never recoup the capital costs nor the operating costs.
I was building a house at the time. I decided to do my part for the environment. I used extra insulation around the slab which is the coldest part of the house and installed geothermal heating and cooling for the basement with in floor heating. Idea was to keep the concrete warm in winter which creates a heat sink for the rest of the house and reduce gas costs by about half.
That winter we fired up the system and ran it for the basement. Worked pretty well so we turned it up even higher to try and heat the top level as well. Later that month I got a power bill for $1000. Turns out geothermal uses a electric motor which runs all the time when geothermal is the main heat source. The system will cool too. Tried it in the summer instead of the AC, got another big bill.
System is turned off now. Gas is like $2 bucks or something. That system cost $20,000. I will never recoup the capital costs nor the operating costs.
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