Could a ground source heat pump cut your bills?

The best ground source heat pump uses refrigerant pipes buried in the ground, not water, and ideally should serve a ducted air system in the house. Bear in mind that you get a relatively low grade of heat (temperature wise) so you should expect to run your heating 24 hours a day. Having said that, such a system woud usually have a coefficient of performance of something like 5 to 1 during a typical English winter - that is to say, for every kilowatt of energy used by the heat pump your home will get 5 kilowatts of useable heat.

Now if you are fortunate enough to have a water source (stream, pond or swimming pool) you could use that instead of the ground as your heat source with the possibility of even higheer COP figures.

Finally, you will have yet another benefit - during hot summer weather the heat pump can be reversed to air condition your house.

Air-to-air heat pumps are used extensively in the USA and are very successful, but in our climate they tend to freeze up too regularly due to our high humidity and relatively mild temperatures.

Finally, the capital cost of such a system is out of the reach of most of us. Not that much dearer if you are building a new house from scratch, but in an existing smallish property???

If we all keep saving fuel by turning things off guess what happens, they put the price up because they are not making enough profit

Man o man I wish I was building a new house right now. I'd get off the grid and the water companies grasp but the nanny state want to dictate to us all like the fascists they are. We have a perfectly acceptable Klargester septic tank system which I put in when I built this house 25 years ago. It never needs emptying and the soak away is bult into one of our fields yet now Severn Trent want to "Adopt" it and charge us a fee / extra on our water rates and the council want to list all "private sewer systems" no doubt so they can f88k us up in one way or another. People like us in the sticks get screwed over all the time. What is Cameron playing at promising a cull of these useless local authority jobsworths and yet hardly any jobs have been cut from the civil service at all. Sure they are speaking about "cuts" but that is in the INCREASE in spending (waste and pi88ing money up the wall to you and I) not actual cuts and NO jobs have been culled at all!!! If we could half the size of government we wouldn't be worried about freezing our nuts off because we'd all have a LOT more money to keep warm this winter!

Novices may wonder why heat pumps (HP) work best with underfloor heating. This attempts a simplistic answer.
A comfortable room temperature is say 21 degrees. Conventional radiators circulate 70ish degree water, so that your little 1/2m sq radiator can adequately heat all the air to 21 degs. A normal HP can only output max 55 degree water, so to adequately heat the room you'd need a much bigger radiator panel (and no one likes the look of radiators). Underfloor heating effectively gives you a radiator (hidden underfloor) that's as big as your whole room. Although the HP can produce 55 degrees, the temperature has to be reduced or you'd burn your tootsie on the 55 deg floor. So the circulating heat is reduced to just 25 degs. (A few degrees get lost somewhere so the floor only gets to say 21 degrees) This is v comfy especially as heat rises so your body is feeling that 21 degree temperature from toes to scalp.....after that, who cares what temperature the ceiling is! The best floor surfaces for underfloor heating is ceramic tiles. The next best is a thin wooden (say oak) floor. But beware, if you put a carpet/underlay over the floor, the heat cant get through, so it wont work and you'll freeze.
I live on a boat so ground source is obviously impossible. I use air source which is every bit as good but a little more expensive to run. Still, its a darn site cheaper/easier to install (£1500 as opposed to £10k+....what you win on the swings you lose on the roundabouts). But for every 1kw of electricity I use to run the HP, I get 4kw of heat out, which means its roughly 1/2 the cost of running a gas boiler and loads less CO2 emissions. Also I can't have underfloor heating on a boat (think about it!), so I blow warm air from the HP into the room. Its every bit as effective but has the minor disadvantage of some low level noise from the fan unit. Its a fab solution when (like me) you have no mains gas.
Hope that helps.

When we had our house renovated and extended, we fitted downlighters and energy efficient bulbs in the renovated rooms and in the extension rooms. It is our view that this was a huge mistake, we are replacing these at the rate one or two a week where in the past we replaced a standard filament bulb about one every year or two.

Not only are the downlighters much more expensive, they are harder to find, and a swine to remove and replace when they stop working, the bulbs are too fragile and often the fastener tongs remain broken off inside the fitting. The energy efficient bulbs should be taken to a recycling place becasue of the toxic materials they contain, but there are not many recycling places to take them too.

What do we do with the dead bulbs now. We dump them in the bin - thereby saving fuel looking for a recycling place.

Run a pipe from The House of Commons and all that hot air politicians spout could be used to heat homes all over the UK

I liked the way that Scottish Power started giving away low wattage light bulbs to save energy. I had about one and a half dozen off them, all in the name of keeping my energy costs down. Then in March and November this year they put there prices up.

I have dug a large hole in my garden and put a 10'x6'x4' fiberglass tank in it. I have directed some of the house rainwater to fill it. Then I am connecting a shed roof downpipe into the tank and a return (via a small pump) to the ridge of the roof. The roof gets too hot to touch in the summer so I am hoping to raise the water temperature in the tank by this means. Whether there will be any benefit in the winter I just don't know. The water in the tank will be used to heat my hot water via a heat pump, maybe the central heating.

I researched PV. Its expensive and no one talks about the eco cost of producing it. Altering the house wiring to absolutely seperate lighting from power and then using LED lamps would save a lot of money especially if they operated at low voltage from a couple of car batteries topped up by wind, PV or even your old exercise bike fitted with with a dynamo.

We need to do something.

My advice as an Air-Conditioning Engineer and now An Air-Conditioning Expert, the only thing that would save you money and has proven that worked for over 20 years is normal Air-Conditioning Heat pump type basically you put it on and within 15 minutes it reaches the temperature set , whatever the temperature is outside. I have installed these type in my house for over 10 years, when Air-Conditioning was still a voodoo in this country and It has never let me down, and as for bills I only have 1 bill to pay which is Electric, due to I have everything Electric no gas, and for a family of 4 especially now I have 2 teenagers ( Girls) , I only pay £110/month. ANd for heating my water for showers I have a new generation Combo Water heater which is also an Air Source Heat Pump from the famous Brand Midea, From Zetacool in London.

I'f you are building a house from scratch it makes sense especially it it's a flat pack. I own own in Scotland, it came from Poland on the back of four very large artics, has a VERY high energy efficiency rating. Several of the houses round have 'air pumps' and one has ground source heating. All of them find they work well but two have log burners too as a back up.

I'm informed that it is now possible to heat radiators from air/ground pump sources as temperatures the systems are achieving are improving, but the rads are large.

The pumps are actually large fridge motors that work in reverse. Instead of taking energy from food, they take energy out of low temperature sources and hike the temperature. An air pump will take energy from air at a temp as low as -2deg C.

Run your bath, washbasin, washing machine, dishwasher and shower water through radiators or pipe systems so the heat is not wasted in the sewers. Ensure cleaning access points are fitted. A huge amount of heat is wasted by households that fail to do this.

Ground Source Heat .... 'My Arse', my cellars underground and it's bleedin freezing down there, i've had to put a radiator in there.

Dopey!
Just do a search via yahoo or google for Geothermal Energy in Iceland and see how it is REALLY done and how we SHOULD develop it in the UK as a country not individual houses.

Nearly 60 years ago two schools in Cheshire were built and had no heating fitted in them, but they were warm all the year. The clever architect was never asked to do any other schools or houses so the secret has gone how that was posible.As for 30 miles needed to go down is silly,ask any miner there would be enough heat to warm water to make a turbine turn at about 2 miles,in Hampshire there is enough heat at nearly the surface and it has been going on there for many years.

The problem with all these systems is the rip offs that are being carried out by so called experts,. PV panels for example cost about $1 per watt so a 3 KW system should cost about £1500 installed so where does the other £3000 to £10000 go that you are quoted, simple straight into the sharks pockets, similarly with ground source heat pumps, dig hole £240, pipes £500 plumbing £50 heat pump about £1500 ex China plus say £100 shiping (no hurry), connect to underfloor heating pipes and system £1000 , so where does the other £15000 go? The Government should be controlling these prices and then we could all afford them. It is a well known fact that civil servants are the worst negotiators in the world and know the real cost of nothing because they are always spending other peolpes money, i.e. ours the tax payer.

I had such a system but have since removed it for several reason
1,It was too noisy,there were 2 boxes 1 unsightly white box in the garden near the bedroom window which was very annoying at night as it sounded like 10 load fridges together
2,The control unit in the garage which had a couple of pumps and an an exchanger plus some contactors,when the heating kicked in this made a fairly loud clack which was the contactor clicking in
3.Space ,we needed 200m square of garden which was dug down to 60cm filled with sand and then the pipes layed on top,the pipes needed to be as close to the control unit as possible so depending on the layout of the garden it may take up your main garden area,as was in our case meaning we could not plant anything in this area.
4.Cost ,we found our electricity bills to be very high due to the system,maybe it wasn't optimised correctly but we did have several people take a look.Installation cost is also pretty high when you add the cost of digging the garden to accommodate the system.

We had this hooked up to an under floor heating system ,it did heat pretty well but overall I would not recommend it.
If you do go for it make sure;
you can place the external unit away from habited areas of the house
You are sure you will not require the garden area for planting later on
Above all be sure to use an expert in the field not just some heating engineer/plumber who has seen it on the internet and think he can install it.
It needs to be set up correctly to be efficient this is very important.

We took our system out and installed a air system which has an outside unit which uses air ,we also had a 2nd unit to heat the hot water,this has proved to be excellent ,quiet and very efficient.

Has your colmnist looked at air source heating which I am told can be just as effective as ground source!

You're better off installing evacuated tube solar heaters than earth-source heat-pumps - unless you''re planning a 'new build' OR shared costs with others. These systems contain 'Dewar' style glass tubes which, themselves, contain black metal tubes which absorb InfraRed wavelength light emitted by the Sun and convert that light into heat.

The vacuum tube ensures none of the heat escapes to the atmosphere. The heat from multiple tubes migrates to one end (usually upper) where it's transferred to a collection tank. There a working fluid absorbs the heat from ALL the tubes and an electric pump carries the fluid through tubing/piping into your home where the heat can be transferred to your potable (hot) water system (aiding the conventional water heating system - reducing energy costs) and/or be used in direct heating systems - such as radiators and sub-floor heating arrangments.

Here's a UK site for a firm which carries an assortment of these systems (just for edification). http://www.navitron.org.uk/category.php?catID=71

Before you go about spending your savings or pension on ANY such systems - check into your thermal insulation. Though the government MAY provide some relief to rate payers in the form of fuel subsidies - if you've gaps in your thermal insulation all you're doing is throwing good money after bad. "Plug the gaps!" You wouldn't attempt sailing cross the channel in a boat rife with holes - would you?

I have a house here in France which runs on what we call a Geothermic heating system which sounds the same as described above. I have 1.7 kilometers of pipe laid about a meter underground connected to a compressor/heat pump. My house is 200Sq Mt which is a reasonable size house.My heating bills come in at around €450 a year to maintain a temperature of 20 C.
In the house I rented whilst mine was being built the house was smaller and cost €1700 of fuel oil.
It cost €22,000 to install in the build project.
I have underfloor heating which is fantastic as it gives an even temperature throughout the house. On a cold morning -18C outside we can walk bare foot and feel very comfortable. In the summer time the system can be reversed and cool the house down.
A normal central heating system would have cost me around €15000 so I have spent €7000 more which I should start to get my money back after 14 years. I could have saved €4000 if I did not have Geothermic heating installed upstairs which would have given me a quicker pay back. If I was doing it again I would probably not install it up stairs as the heat raises. We have the up stairs heating almost turned off as it gets to hot during the night.We were advised that we would not need it up stairs. Another friend of ours has the same system. They also said they would not have it installed up stairs if they were doing it again. I think it is a great system for our style of house. It wouldn't work for your normal terrace or Semi type house in the UK

She didn`t say 30 feet but 30 miles! read more carefully Barry