Real Estate, Finance and Home Articles of Interest

A device that extracts heat from beneath the Earth is called a Geothermal Heat Pump (GHP). The GHP functions based on the principle that heat will move from higher to lower temperature materials, by either conduction or convention (air currents). These pumps absorb energy from both the ground and bodies of water and uses it to provide space and water heating. This is able to occur because the Earth absorbs 50% of the suns heat that reaches the Earth's service.

Ground source heating and cooling will give great comfort and be cost-effective with environmentally-friendly technology which uses our planet's ability to store energy as heat. Geothermal heat pump systems move the heat from Earth or from water into buildings, or from buildings right back into Earth. A little bit of electricity is employed for operating fans, pumps, controls, and a little compressor.

The temperature of the ground a few feet below the surface is relatively constant, to GHPS use it as a source of heating a cooling. GHPs can be used for either retrofit or brand new homes, and they can also provide hot water with no extra cost, just by moving heat around instead of creating it. GHPs are new, but they can save you a lot of money.

It can cost several times to install a geothermal heating and cooling system, compared to the traditional kind. However, those costs are recovered over the next five to ten years, in the form of saving on energy costs. The interior components of these systems can easily last twenty-five years, and the piping in the ground can last fifty years. These systems are practical in most areas, and about 50,000 new systems are put in every year. They heat in the winter, and cool in the summer.

Many new residential systems are equipped with desuperheaters which transfer excess heat from the geothermal heat pump's compressor to the home's hot water storage tank providing very efficient water heating. However, the desuperheater will not provide hot water during the spring and fall when the geothermal heat pump system is not operating. But because the geothermal heating system is so much more efficient than other means of water heating, some manufacturers are offering 'full demand' systems that utilize a separate heat exchanger to cost-effectively provide for hot water needs.