Is a Geothermal Heat Pump Worth It? My Net Zero Home

Stop lying, it is a scam: main complaints - more noisy than a fighter jet under stress, cost a fortune on electricity, worse than useless in the winter and like all scams - you pay a fortune up front and never get your money back.

In my opinion you should have waited for 1/2 years more.. Remember AGI is coming within 10 months. That will change everything.

Can this type of heating/cooling be ustilized in an arctic tundra? I feel like the permafrost will get in the way

Dont forget about apportunity cost. In this case it was a $16,000 premium to save $1000 a year. If that 16k was invested instead with 10% return would have made $1,600 in gains meaning a profit of $600 by not doing the more effiient option. Doesnt by any means make it the wrong choice, just always something to consider with large up front costs.

Simple question: how much electricity does the geothermal system consume in a month in winter?

Im actually suprised it was only $100,000. People spend this on a car. This price goes towards the price of your house why shouldnt more people be doing this?

This ain’t ever paying for itself. I think it’s ok to spend this much but this is essentially just a hobby and you’re doing it because you enjoy it. There are absolutely no economic benefits to this even in the longest of terms

Been waiting on this video since he said he was building the house

I love the fact that you chose the brand water furnace and especially the series 7! I personally think that brand is the best geo unit on the market!!

Your setup needs a process flow diagram and P&IDs... 😮

My neighbor built a geothermal drilling rig that would drill multiple holes from a single location - basically angled our away from the central point in 8 or so wells. Wells did not have to be as deep and saved on labor.

What a load of rubbish . These things are crap

the air tight house sounds great the only worry is what happens if the system goes down and needs repair.

Me, me....I want geothermal for my home!

How often does geothermal need maintenance or inspection and how much is that ?

Contact me, I have answers why Central Europe won’t accept a carbon neutral economy because of how we heat our homes

Instead of going with some crazy set up, could you just get more Solar? To offset the difference

At $100k price tag… there is definitely something to be said for DIY. How much do you think everything would have saved you if you did it yourself?

I am from South Africa so snow is something that we see every couple of decades, but I have been seeing a lot of videos lately with people in the US shovelling snow or slipping down their driveways in winter. I was wondering, would it be possible to install an entire geothermal solution under the driveway and then just have the pump accessible to move the liquid around? The liquid would need to be something that wouldn't freeze, but if the undergroup pipes warmed the liquid and then transfer enough heat to keep the driveway just above freezing, then the snow/ice should melt off. Maybe you would need to have a little lot pressure steam system to quickly heat the liquid in case of heavy snow.

I bought one 25 years ago. It did cost more. However, it only increased my mortgage payment $30 a month. I had a bigger home than all of my neighbors. And My heating and cooling bills averaged $200 a month less than my neighbors.

Here is a layman's example of how geothermal works. Imagine racing Usain Bolt at his peak athleticism and you are at your peak athleticism. He is the best normal HVAC system at the starting line. You are you, but you get to start at the 55 meter line. You will easily beat him in a 100M race running backwards. That helps you understand the efficiency of the geothermal heat pump system.

la promotion de cette pompe à chaleur géothermique semble convaicante, mais il faudra améléliorer la vitesse trop rapide de la traduction et exposé plus lentement. Je suis sûr que vous le pouvez et que vous y arriverez! Dans tous les cas, vous présentez des offres fort intéressentes; il nous faut juste mieux comprendre le syspème d'en amont en aval et sur les impacts dont : la question d'allergie, le vidandage et autres impairs éventuels qu'il faut éclaircir pour plus de transparence pour tout futur client de vos partenaires.

I really don't understand why not just spend $18k more on solar energy and put air conditioning in its place. Faster to heat/cool, with a greater range, and you don't need a bunch of equipment that makes the house look like a 90's factory.

This look fine for traditional wood frame house. What about ICF home?

This Still Doesn't Pencil... This will work if You have a an Excess Reserve. But for now, You better Push the Pencil More Matt! ✏️

Also of note- Using an open source well as opposed to a closed loop- the water quality of your specific location MUST be considered. Working in the industry where well water is extremely corrosive I've seen horrors within this setup that negate the 'free energy'. Even 100% properly and perfectly installed setups are wrecked by poor well water quality. Valves and equipment hate it and you will still be paying that "upfront cost" for years if you overlook this in the wrong location.

Disagree on economics of desuperheater. ROI dubious

Matt, love the video, but in your cost comparison between Geo and Air source, doesn't the 30% tax credit also apply to the air source heat pump, so the premium is actually $28k, not $16.6 k?

Bro says my wife and I , nearly infinity times

Fantastic video, so educational. The graphics are top notch, so easy to follow. I had been dreaming up parts of this system in my head, wondering if they existed. This is the first video I've found showing all the parts working together.

I replaced a propane central heater and electric AC unit with a vertical geothermal system. Mine required 3 wells. It has worked well and with the cost of propane it repaid itself pretty quickly. However I did have a major problem that has been solved. The problem was my pump kept having leaking problems. I think I replaced it twice. The first two were free. Eventually the installer came to me and said the problem was the water has some bacteria in it that ate away at the iron parts in the pump causing it to fail. They replaced all of the fluid in the system and included an anti bacterial. I have not had an issue since.

How about the maintenance?

6 to 10 feet makes sense for a horizontal loop, but videos always seem to show some dude installing piping in a trench no deeper than 5 feet. Or are all these installer dudes over 7 feet tall?

Ya, ya, we get it; you have a large yard

The 5 and 10 year follow up to this should note the various points others have listed here as having not been considered (opportunity costs, inflation, etc). My first reaction to a system like this, as a tech nerd, is 'HELL YEA!' but the older experienced side of me has learned more complex systems have more breakdown costs which may not be easy to foresee or estimate from the start. It takes 1 failure in a number of optional systems to push out your breakeven date by years. Other costs to consider are the added insurance premiums associated with the systems value on your home and property taxes (a product of your property value). If the mission trumps all these variables, then rock on with it. But in discussing just the dollars and cents, there is a lot to consider on the merits.

My personal experience with my Geothermal heat pump is that I don't like the deal with it. They run the compressor when cooling which makes no sense to me with how the ground is always a constant temperature. I really doubt it really saves much energy with how they currently design Geothermal systems. I don't regret using Geothermal in our house, but I definitely would not recommend it either. My electric bill is typically higher in the summer with air conditioning than it is in winter with heating. Something doesn't seem right to me but my installer says it's working as it should. I'm just not sold on the savings they flaunt. I have the same brand as shown in this video just a series 5 instead of 7.

@UndecidedMF

what system do you use to monitor your power demand on your home power supply panels?

About the 30% tax deduction — if your taxes were already deducted from your w2, that write-off only negates what you might owe; you do not get that money back. The deduction is a SCAM.

Net zero once you pollute a crap ton to build this crazy system. Have fun working on it all the time in 30 years until you finally just abandon it

Bose grandkids will be paying the fng mortgage on this thing 😂

100k for a water heater and home heating. That’s ridiculous

What is your opinion on Earthships? They are also net zero homes.

so if your electric bill is $5000 a year, its gonna take you roughly 20 years to make your money back?

I'm a big fan overall but my father-in-law had a ground source system that the lines in the yard failed out of warranty and it was far more expensive to replace the lines than the initial install of the entire system. His system lasted approximately 20 years before failure. He now went to an air to air heat pump system for his large cabin and it does not keep up and runs into emergency heat all the time.

We have had a water furnace for about 10 years. Another positive is that there is a LOT less refrigerant used… just enough to be inside the unit, and doesn’t break because it isn’t exposed. An outside unit flows from inside to outside, and is suceptible to breakage and thus leakage of all your refrigerant which is very expensive. Also, because they change standards every few years, you may have to change the system altogether if the new refrigerant requires higher pressures than your previous coils could handle.

On the downside, early on, the water pipes stretch, meaning you have to have a professional come out regularly to repressurize. If you relied on your own cleaning skills, you might have to buy equipment, or just know that you need to do that.

However, after a few years, it is done stretching and refills are less needed; I haven’t had more added for a while.

Fyi, in my situation, I utilize wood heating with heat pump in coldest weather.

I went through this process in 2010 when my air source heat pumps were worn out. I am in Florida within 2 miles of the west coast. I started with 2 systems because my home has as addition with duct work not accessible to the original home's footprint. My goal was to be greener than I had been, without spending a lot of extra money (over all). I did a year by year comparison or installing 2 new high efficiency air to air heat pumps with the plan for our WaterFurnace units. As I had desuperheaters with my old units I ran the comparison with desuperheaters in both designs. Really. about break even (given the tax credit), but 2 things tipped the balance for me; a) in our location the ground source heat pumps did not require ant resistance heating backups that would be installed on the air source design (maybe today the air source units would not need them either), b) the power required was under 30 amps for each unit. 14 years on I am still pleased with the units (perfect? no. but what is). I was also able to add a pool heater to my ground loop as well. A side benefit here is that in shoulder seasons, when the pool water needs heating but the house needs cooling (might be unique to Florida) the pool unit is extracting heat from the loop as the house units are dumping heat into the loop. The process is easy for me to understand, but everyone should be aware of the geology of their land. In Florida the rock is limestone, quite porous with in our case the ground water not very far below the surface. We found a vertical bore hole could only go down 50 feet, so we have a lot of bore holes, and a lot of loop (3,000 feet for a 3,000 sq ft home with pool). Subsurface in Florida is pretty much a constant 73 degrees. But one aspect of using ground loops not discussed in this video is that in areas with a great difference in temperatures between summer and winter the theory is that the heat dumped into the subsurface in summer is to some percentage available to heat a home in winter. But for this to happen the subsurface around the ground loop piping must have the capacity and heat conductance to store that energy. In our area, with so much ground water and pretty much sandy subsurface soils, the heat being dumped is conducted away from the loop by the moisture in the soil (good for a long cooling season which is what we have). This works for us in Florida as we really don't have a large heating load in winter (it did snow in the Florida panhandle this year). Hopefully everyone has a knowledgeable installer, but before going forward its good to get all the information about your area so your expectations can be adjusted to be closer to reality. No magic, just science.

To me, this system sounds like extreme overkill. Here I am wincing at paying 13k for standard heat pump conversion and new ducting lol

Hello! I just wanted to get clarification, with your new home did you get the federal tax credit for both the geothermal and the solar systems for the first year living in the new home???