Thread: Earth Heating

We'd be better to do something like that for cooling!
Havent heard of it before but I did do a project in High school (based on an idea dad gave me) of running water through coils of black poly pipe for heating it. My physics was a bit hazy as was my assignment dedication, but the results were positive enough for my physics teacher to install a system on his roof to heat his pool to a comfortable temperature

ground source heat pump. I wanted to do this for slab heating/cooling in our new house we built a couple of years ago, but NO ONE would return my calls, answer my emails etc...so it never went ahead which was a shame, as now i wish i'd stuck the plumbing in for it. works off the ambient temperature of the earth. quite simple.

My inlaws had one outfit quote to install such a system and none of their numbers checked out.
Typical case of salesmen garnishing what used to be the truth to sell their system.
They were also hooking the system into the hot water circuit and claiming it would greatly reduce heating loads. Somehow they hadn't considered that you can't heat hot water at 60-65C with a heat-pump that only puts out 35C.

These guys were claiming the ground even where I live was a steady 12C a metre down all year. Now I keep forgetting to install temp probes, but I have seen ground frozen most of a metre down here in winter.

The actual unit was a Delonghi MTD, they are designed around sending water/glycol out at -3C and returning it at 0C.
The core parts of the system were sound, but I had zero faith in that pack of clowns to make a system perform as required.

I remember reading about a ground source heat pump being installed in a community hall in Geelong, the article was in the ATA magazine. Try contacting them from their site: Alternative Technology Association website they would be the most knowledgeable about where to search for a supplier.

Hi
The Marine Board building in Hobart was built with a sea water heating system, and that was back in the 1970s. It works by trying to freeze the Derwent River, and that is never much below 9 degrees.

cheers

hey discomark are you part of a swaussie couple? if you watch grand designs every second house on tehre do the pipes in the ground about 300m from memory and they use it for under floor heating. also where abouts in sweden were you?

Originally Posted by schmierer LR at singleton

hey discomark are you part of a swaussie couple? if you watch grand designs every second house on tehre do the pipes in the ground about 300m from memory and they use it for under floor heating. also where abouts in sweden were you?

Hi schmierer
I guess we are a swaussie couple but i'm from UK originally so may not qualify ; )
The house is about 30kms from Växjö is Southern Sweden and the earth heating does seem quite popular over there and across Northern Europe.

The inlaws are pretty lucky in that they have a small creek running through the property and they have build a small hydro electric setup to make use of the constant flow of water. They produce between 7 to 10KW constant and year round so usually have enough to pump the surplus back into the grid and send the power company a bill (wouldn't that be nice!)
Cheers
Mark

i live 2 hrs south west of there.yes they are very lucky that they have the set up for it all constant water no natural disasters beside snow. and it funny what abit extra insulation can do to a place. when i build in australia i will make sure i go extra insulation and try and have at least 2 alternative energies because none of them are reliable enough all the time. i find it all very interesting and quite alot of it seems quite simple