[imcarthur]

From my son-in-law:

"The geothermal works well. The payback is not quite as good as we were told. We kept our existing forced air propane furnace and put a coil in the plenum. The Dc fan blows past the geothermal coil to heat the house. The heat is not a hot heat it actualy feels cool coming out of the vent but it is adding BTU's to the home and therefor raising the temp. The propane is set as a backup if the geothermal can't keep up. To my knowledge the propane has never turned on since.

The part of the geothermal that the suppliers shy away from telling you is the system uses a compressor. Compressors draw power. 15Amps at 240V and it runs 50 percent of a day. 5 minutes on 5 minutes off. So the hydro costs are high. But the Propane cost goes to zero. It also has a neat feature that they run a line around the compressor to remove heat from it when the compressor is running. This heats our domestic water.

Our system has 4 200' loops buried 12' below ground. It's considered a 4 ton unit. The geothermal also works for AC it just reverses the system. It works like a refrigerator to remove heat from the home.

People think a refrigerator adds cold. It doesn't it removes heat.

I would say we save approx. $350 - $400 per month in peak seasons.

But it was a $22000 investment. If it wasn't for the government grants I wouldn't have done it."

Ian