Question by Becca: Can you use geothermal energy in your home?
I’m doing a major project in science and I need to know if geothermal energy can be used in the home. It’s going in as a test grade, and if it can be used in the home what advantages/disadvantages can it have on a home in the midwest say like Iowa, with horribly snowy winters and incredibly hot summers.
Best answer:
Answer by shan
yea, it’ll cost a whooollllleee lot of moneys though!
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One Response
Unless you have volcanic activity nearby (which you don’t in Iowa), you can’t really use geothermal energy (as in free heat from the earth). What most people mean when they say that is a heat pump that uses the earth instead of the air to take and send heat from/to.
A normal heat pump pulls heat from the air in the winter (heating your house) and pulls heat from your house in the summer (cooling it). Practically, there’s a limit to how hot or cold it is outside before the heat pump can’t transfer enough heat The earth, on the other hand, tends to stay a fairly constant temperature all year if you go down more than a couple feet. So, if you bury the heat exchange part of the heat pump a couple feet underground, the heat pump will be much more efficient.
It takes a big hole to lay out the heat exchanger – installations I’ve seen run $15,000+ for the excavation alone. It also is a pain if the exchanger has to be maintained (it has to be dug up, carefully). But it works well in most places that are either not supertropical or have permafrost. I’ve seen several of them in Missouri and they work very well. They’re just really expensive.
DK