labeeman
Solar Enthusiast
Copper tubing is a waste of money as the limiting factor is the ground it is a poor conductor of heat the plex tubing that is used for floor heating is much cheaper than copper.
lol! what's the cost ratio of fart to electricity? ? thank you for your insights. very interesting about the frequency tuning of slab insulation. rad. and angled outwards boreholes for increased thermal transfer. cheers!In my opinion (building for homes for 34 years) make the house airtight, insulate insulate insulate and then you can heat your house with 2 light bubs and a fart....
YES!Anyone interested?
Thank you for sharing your experience in this field (ha ha get it geothermal fields) ? definitely please share more if you want!Sorry for the long post but this is one of my favorite topics to talk about!
Forgot to mention that all new home builds have to have an HRV or an ERV installed in order
to remove excess moisture and control the RH of the house. HRV and ERV provide fresh air into the 24/7.
Geothermal is energy/heat from the ground. Many call ground source heat pumps geothermal but that is not really where the energy comes from. Drilled loops or horizontal loops are considered ground source closed loop systems. The heat they recover or transfer is from the sun.
True geothermal is only available in certain areas where the crust is thin. I read an article some years ago about Iceland or Greenland having true geothermal piped around to houses for heat. That's real geothermal!
I agree that the tighter you build the better the efficientcy of the house is. The HRV/ERV system is critical for the health of the occupants and should be a requirement. But requirements is a whole other topic.
thanks for sharing your experience!Years ago I built and used a passive geo unit in my home. I ran 40 ft to the well and with very insulated pex to the water line then 50 feet down into the water and 50 ft back up in the water with copper. I used a inverter fan used in walk in freezers. A taco pump 60 watts. It cooled the air well but didn’t dehumidify. Here in Arkansas that is important. Most dehumidifiers are not very energy efficient. I can run a mini split for less than a dehumidifier. I used it for a couple of years.
i really like your idea.The more interesting thing to me would be to do air to water with separate storage tanks for hot/cold and multiple uses in the house
Really big! 1 btu changes 1 pound of water 1 degree. How big is your AC unit? 2 ton is 24000 btu per hour. 1 gallon of water is approximately 8.33 pounds.I had a kinda crazy idea once to build a very large insulated storage tank with coils in the bottom of it.
When it gets very cold in the winter ... take the top off and blow the cold air down inside and add a new layer of water that turns to ice every day til its filled up with ice.
Don't know how big that tank would have to be to provide cooling for the summer.