I think your right Tom, first time for everything! LOL

Nate, Tom,
I had the heating and cooling company quote me open-loop geo, air-source heat pump with LP back-up, and a/c with LP heat.
He gave me:Those prices and options eliminated the air-source option for me. I have air-source currently, and I don't care for it. We spend a lot of time below 20°F. So I am left with geo or LP. I'm probably looking at the lower end options for each. The upfront cost of the geo is more, but there is a 30% tax credit for most of it's cost plus its cheaper to operate than the LP furnace. The drawback to geo is three-fold: #1 Open source means extra load on my well pump, #2 dumping water constantly, #3 electric-strip back-up heating. He says that I won't need the back up heat until it gets below 10°F and they put it on an override breaker so that I have control when it turns on which I like.


So I was just wondering if anyone has any experience, good or bad, with geo systems. That's the way I'm leaning, but I feel like I'm in uncharted territory with it.

<p>geo is very efficient when used with baseboard heat.</p><p>the only problem with it is the heat transfer pumps are electric. so unlike a gas fired boiler that only uses electricity for the water pump, the geo uses electric for 2 circulation pumps. one for in ground and one for in house. but this is compensated for in lack of fuel cost.</p><p>i am not a fan of forced air heat. so for me geo as a heat/ac option was not going to work. i only have hot water baseboard or radiator heat in my house and shop. and the shop would have had in-floor radiant heat, but the guy that poured the floor came a week early and did not put the lines in before pouring.</p>

Dig a deep lake and use that water source...

Don't forget, you need to stay in your home for quite some time to see a 14k investment pay off on a furnace. This is why we didn't go with the high efficiency AC unit when I had mine installed this summer. The power cost saved vs cost of the high efficient unit didn't start to pay dividends for around twelve years! That's assuming the unit lasts that long.

How old is your air source HP? That technology has come a LONG way in the last 5 years. I would think they could have also made the emergency heat for the HP electric strip if you would have rather had that in the furnace. The ones we have here work well below their rated 20* outdoor temp. Even in the dead of winter last year (some days well below zero) those units were making air in excess of 100 degrees which is amazing to me. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself.

I'd have a hard time swallowing spending $12-14k on a heating system. Like Todd said, unless you're going to be there the rest of your life, you'd have to be saving some pretty big money to make it worth it. To make up $8k in price difference, you'd have to be saving $100 every month for 80 months (6 and a half years) to make it pay for itself. After that, sure you're saving money, but $100 a month is a lot of cash to save, and after that first 6 or 7 years, you have to wonder how much longer the system will last.

This feller is pretty smart....lol

You're saying you have a heat pump that puts out 100° air with outside temps below 20° without using heat strips or any other supplemental heat?

That's impressive. My heat pump is around 10 years old and won't come close to doing that. My electric bill triples in the winter time, and 20° is rare here.

Yeah, Todd, I thought so too..... then he allowed a bunch of guys he hardly knows swarm his place for a whole weekend... eating his food, sleeping in his home, using the facilities...AND using his tools, scattering them all over the place! I know that in itself had to drive him nuts!
Maybe he's not such a fart smeller after all.......... but he sure knows how to help an FTE / OBS brother out!

I agree Todd only without the lol !

I totally agree Brian!!

That's what I'm saying. It really is impressive. The other thing these systems will do in a multi-zone environment (assuming you have multiple indoor units like we do in a commercial building) is to use what they call "branch boxes" to swap refrigerant between different zone. One compressor, one outdoor unit, but several different indoor units tied together through these branch boxes. The result is that you can actually cool one room (putting the heat into the refrigerant) and heat another room on the same branch box with that same heated refrigerant. You're essentially swapping heat and cooling between rooms. It is some really cool technology that makes running a building like that a lot more efficient than the old model of forced air with local reheat.

I don't know about being a smart feller. Sometimes I don't feel too smart with the stuff I get myself into. That weekend was a good time though. I wish we had more time to sit and relax and hang out, but I've always said that working alongside someone is a great way to get to know them.

I'm not sure you guys wanted to get to know me that well tho lol

My current HP is 11 years old. It has quit working and needed repairs 3 times in the year and half I have lived here. When it gets below 25-30 deg the strip heat has to come on or the house can't stay warm. I think its an undersized unit personally and that's probably half the problem.

The HP units are close in price to geo, but geo has the 30% tax credit so its actually a little cheaper to go with geo. Also, the COP of geo is much higher because if its 20° outside I'll still be harvesting heat from 50° water. Another benefit to geo is its a fad right now, so it should actually add a some amount of value to my property.
Also, I'm not dropping 14k, more like 10k and I'll get about 3k back in tax credits. The more I think about this the more geo sounds like the best option.

Thanks for the conversation guys. Its good to bounce ideas back and forth with intelligent, unbiased people, lol.

If that's the case and you're looking at getting Geo installed for $7k (after the tax rebates and incentives) then I'd say it is a no-brainer as compared to the prices you're getting for the other systems you've priced. The other prices for the standard units seem rather high to me, but that's just me. I wonder if you'd get a lower price on the install of a standard system if you had a contractor come out and price just that. I wonder if they are marking that price way up to make you lean towards the other (more expensive) options. I'd at least be sure you get a price from 1-2 other contractors before you ink a deal.

But yeah, if that's a legit analysis of the price out of pocket, then geo is the way to go.

Model T parts and truck parts are more fun....just saying..