Install a home geothermal system, and you may never need oil or gas to heat or cool your home again. The system, while ingenious goes back may centuries. Many cultures around the world and through time have uses the Earth’s nature temperatures for keeping warm or cool and for heating water.
For the home, a geothermal pump system is put into place. Rather than generating heat by buring fuel, as does a traditional home furnace, a home geothermal systems collects the earth’s natural heat and brings it up from below to your home heating your home and even providing hot water in advanced systems. In the hot months, the system cools your home by the opposite process. It draws the heat from your home and allows it to be absorbed by the cooler earth.
A geothermal system for your home consists of a series of pipes called loops that are installed below the surface of the ground or sometimes submersed into a body of water, such as a lake or a pond. There is fluid in the pipes that circulate in almost the same way as normal baseboard heating. The fluid is an environmentally safe antifreeze coolant.
In a home geothermal system, there is an electrical component, an electrically driven compressor and heat exchanger. The amount of energy used by this system, however, is very small.
There are different options when it comes to having a home geothermal system installed, with the cost of the system being on average about $20,000, including drilling costs. The cost will vary according to your needs and the geography of your property.Installing this type of system is not a do-it-yourself project.
So how much energy can we save using a geothermal system? The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Geothermal Technologies would like to see two million systems in service. These systems would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 1 million metric tons of carbon each year. Americans would also save more than $400 million dollars a year.
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