Ground Source Heat Pumps

When you think of geothermal energy, you think of a massive project and lots of digging to put pipes under the ground. But there is another way to take advantage of geothermal heating and cooling, and that is with a ground source heat pump. Many homes all of the US are taking advantage of the heating power that they earth can provide. Here is some more information about ground source heat pumps and their history from the New York Times: 

Ground-source heat-pump geothermal systems take advantage of the earth’s constant temperature below the frost line to heat and cool buildings.

That line varies according to latitude, but ranges in the United States from about three to six feet. Below that depth the temperature stays around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, give or take a few degrees. That is why a subterranean cave feels warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Wells for this geothermal energy usually go down in the hundreds rather than thousands of feet.

The technology is hardly new. The first successful commercial installation of ground-source heat pumps for climate control was in 1946 in an office tower in Portland, Ore. And the technology is best known in the Midwest and the South where the Department of Energy reports two-thirds of the nation’s geothermal systems are located.

The trend is steadily upward, according to Steven Chalk, chief operating officer of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The 115,442 heat pumps that shipped from manufacturers in 2009, the latest year for which statistics are available, Mr. Chalk said, “was triple the number from a decade earlier.” He said that 3.5 percent of homes built that year installed geothermal heat pumps.

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