<p>We are considering installing a geothermal heating/cooling system in our home. It simply seems to make sense to use the 55 degrees temps available a mere six feet underground to bring the house to temperature before wasting oil/gas heat. Do you have such a system? Have you installed one? Do you want one? Why do we not all have them? Are there tax breaks for installing them? Do new homes routinely have them? And so forth.</p>
<p>Tax breaks would depend on your state and county. I’m not sure if there are any federal tax breaks. If you consider this, read the tax code carefully. You may have to install it in a certain year, there may be income limits to who can receive the deduction, etc. In our county, there is a rebate of some form but they run out of money every year so the early filers are the ones who get it.</p>
<p>From what I understand, it is a heat pump system that is buried deep. If you have an existing house, your yard will be largely dug up to install it. All your energy expenditures will be for electricity to run the heat pump so your electric bills may even go up if you have gas or oil heat now. Your total energy bill will be much lower though.</p>
<p>Where I live, gas heat is affordable and electricity is not; plus, the local electric company is just bad and I resent every dollar I give them. Our county tacks on additional taxes occasionally to the electric bill too - sometimes these taxes are more than 25% of the bill! For these specific reasons, if I were to do a major investment in energy saving I would install solar panels rather than geothermal heating and cooling.</p>
<p>A friend’s brother had it installed in his mountain home (which is now on the market…) it was uber expesive and its doubtful he’ll recoup the cost if/when the house sells</p>
<p>A friend who is in the efficiency business says it makes sense if it’s a closed loop with the water (it gets reused) but not if it gets dumped.</p>
<p>I heard this on NPR a couple of weeks ago and have been mulling this over. I probably won’t stay in my current house long enough to recoup the cost, but am keeping it mind for a future residence. So am reading this thread with interest :)</p>
<p>[Tapping</a> The Earth For Energy Savings Year-Round : NPR](<a href=“Tapping The Earth For Energy Savings Year-Round : NPR”>Tapping The Earth For Energy Savings Year-Round : NPR)</p>
<p>Here’s a very detailed story of one family’s experience with geothermal (and with trying to get their rebates):</p>
<p>[Switch</a> to geothermal energy improves heating and cooling, and saves money - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/switch-to-geothermal-energy-improves-heating-and-cooling-and-saves-money/2011/01/13/ABiv7aE_story.html]Switch”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/switch-to-geothermal-energy-improves-heating-and-cooling-and-saves-money/2011/01/13/ABiv7aE_story.html)</p>
<p>And here’s the federal tax rebate nitty-gritty…</p>
<p>[Federal</a> Tax Credits for Energy Efficiency : ENERGY STAR](<a href=“http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=tax_credits.tx_index]Federal”>Federal Income Tax Credits and Incentives for Energy Efficiency | ENERGY STAR)</p>
<p>my sister had a heat pump installed when they built their house about 22 years ago.
They since have had to install a reg gas furnace when it was not cost effective to repair/maintain the heat pumo.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info folks! Looking forward to hearing from some others who have such a system. It seems like the combo of geothermal and solar on individual homes could take us a long way … I am perplexed as to why there are not more incentives to build these systems into new and existing homes. EK4 - what was the failure mode and why so expensive to repair? </p>
<p>I can imagine a HUGE jobs program if homes were routinely retrofitted with these systems. There would have to be better tax incentives, tho, as the systems are petty expensive. Just seems like its time is coming.</p>
<p>Editing - reading the first NPR link - WOW 30% federal tax credit?!? Looking better by the moment!</p>
<p>We plan to put geothermal in our new house. There is no gas to our property and we plan to retire there so, over time, it will make sense. I have a friend who just had solar panels installed on her house. She and her husband are greatly amused when they go out and watch their electric meter spin backwards.</p>
<p>Hugcheck,</p>
<p>As others have said, Geothermal is very energy efficient. It will pay off over the long run, but the long run is about 20 to 30 years, which is also about the life of the system. So, considering system replacement costs, it’s about a draw between geothermal and traditional heat systems as far as a cost basis goes.</p>
<p>There are two major downsides to geothermal:</p>
<p>1) The temperature of the air that blows out of the heating ducts is colder than air that comes from traditional heating ducts. This means that if a person is cold, it might be three hours until that person feels warm.</p>
<p>2) For cost efficiency, the geothermal system is sized to cover about 90% of the winter heating needs. Electric heaters are installed in the unit that kick in the 10% of the winter that is very cold as backup heating sources.</p>
<p>The biggest issue with geothermal is cost. Even including a 30% federal tax credit (which I don’t know if it was renewed for 2011), there still is a huge upfront cost and that is money that could have been invested by upgrading other parts of the home or other forms of renewable energy.</p>
<p>I don’t have geothermal heat pump but I do have an air source heat pump. (came concept but instead of using the cold from under ground it uses the air from outside). I like it very much. I use it when the weather is consistently above 45 for heat and also for a/c (central air) in the summer. Mine has electric as a backup source for when it can’t get enough air from outside to keep it warm in the cold months. When it’s that cold I turn it off and use my old fashioned steam(oil) heat. Have you considered a system like that? While expensive, they are still much cheaper then the geothermal option.</p>
<p>The 30% Federal Tax credit for geothermal heat pumps, small wind turbines and solar panels (and solar water heaters) is good until December 31, 2016. There is no upper limit.</p>
<p>We’ve been looking at geothermal, but our home is a pre-1900 Victorian with minimal insulation (plaster on brick is not amenable to much in the way of insulation, and our entire first floor has that problem, and the space above the living area in the upstairs only allowed for R-16 ceiling insulation). So, I’ve been trying to do more work finding out how geothermal is working in houses with similar characteristics, and the information is tough to come by. Our current furnace is 22 years old, and I know we’ll need to replace it eventually, but one of the things we learned from it was that HVAC design (capacity, ducting, returns) needs to be done differently in an old, poorly insulated house than it would in a better insulated house. We have real hot spots and real cold spots with the current system, and I’m nervous about getting the geothermal system sized properly. </p>
<p>We’ve also seen a lot of local geothermal companies go out of business, which isn’t giving us a great feeling either. Solar is heavily used in our area, but would not be approved for our house. Geothermal doesn’t affect the exterior view of the house, and so that would be approved. </p>
<p>We’re also trying to figure out the tax credit issue: besides the federal tax credit, we have a state tax credit for substantial maintenance/repairs/improvements to historic properties, and I’d like to see if we’re allowed to go for both, which would be most helpful.</p>
<p>We did extensive research into geothermal, and would have installed it if we could afford the upfront cost. It is NOT true that installing a closed loop will result in digging up your entire property: it depends whether the loop in installed vertically or horizontally. One requires drilling a well, though, which is expensive. The configuration will depend on the configuration of your property. How long the payback would be really depends on your current and future heating/energy costs. If the price per gallon of heating oil goes through the roof, geothermal would pay for itself in well under 10 years at my house. We would also have gotten more or less “free” central a/c, which would be nice when it is very humid.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, we achieved a 30% reduction in oil usage by beefing up the attic insulation and having the sill and chases to the first floor foamed to halt the chimney effect, plus new storm windows all round. (Our house is about 100 years old.) Unfortunately for us, we did this before they instituted the tax credit for it. 
There have been huge advances in furnace technology in the last 10 or 20 years. I’d look into that, too. It can save a bundle.</p>
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<p>This is true only if the price of electricty doesn’t go through the roof as well. </p>
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<p>Hmmmm…</p>
<p>Wouldn’t using it in the summer when the owner previously didn’t use any cooling detract from the energy savings benefits?</p>
<p>I have had several clients install geothermal in the last 2 years. Price is ~$27,000! 30% came back on their federal tax return, but that’s still a very expensive up-front cost.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t do it in my area, although we have very cold long winters and LP gas is expensive. With both geothermal and regular heat pumps, I’ve seen way too many problems that were a major pain and took a lot of time and effort to get resolved. I suspect most of them were due to improper installs or unqualified repairmen, but in this area, there seems to be a real shortage of people who can do them correctly.</p>
<p>My parents put in a regular heat pump, and hated it due to the noise it made while running and the fact it blew out “cold” air. They disconnected it and went back to their regular natural gas furnace. Costly mistake. I don’t care about the free a/c, because I run the a/c only on the most humid and muggy days.</p>
<p>Consolation – what do you mean by “have the sills and the first floor chases foamed”? Did this involve taking apart windows? What kind of chases did you have? </p>
<p>We’e considering having the existing ceiling drywall opened up and the fiberglass bats taken out and icynene foamed into the ceiling instead. We’d have some drywall to repair, but we’ve been told that the icynene would materially improve the energy efficiency of the house. (Of course, everyone who tells us that is trying to sell us something.)</p>
<p>Ok I am confused. Why does it blow out cold air? 55 degree air? Then you heat with electric from there? Aren’t there heat exchangers on the market so the 55 degrees is captured in the basement and then the heating system simply heats from there? We have oil fired forced hot water. No air ducts. Is there a geothermal system that uses some sort of heat exchange in conjunction with an oil fired furnace? I just want the furnace to kick on at 55 degrees instead of at 0 degrees. ??</p>
<p>Don’t know about private homes, but my daughter’s college is using geo-thermal to heat/cool three new dorms. They are in N.Carolina.
[E-net</a>! - Geothermal system to heat & cool Colonnades](<a href=“http://www.elon.edu/e-net/Note.aspx?id=946888]E-net”>Elon University / Today at Elon / Geothermal system to heat & cool Colonnades)</p>