Geothermal heating / coooling thoughts

dachopper · Feb 23, 2021 2:58 am

After some opinions of people who have experienced , or who have installed geothermal cooling ( either hydro pipes underground, or air pipes underground? ), for concrete slab cooling / heating and Air / Air exchangers.....

In particular Does it work in the dead of summer or winter ?

Nick

StructuralBIMGuy · Mar 05, 2021 11:00 am

Opinions without data and proofs are worthless, ie Opinions can't be used for compliance and certification
For energy track down an environmental engineer and do simulations on your House
I have concluded in WA (Moderate Climate) it's a waste of money here
Ground Temperature recovery systems
BTW, Nobody cares about thermal (Breaks) when your slabs breaking up.
OT, You are better off investing in making sure your house doesn't move on reactive soils
Cheers
Chris

dachopper · Mar 06, 2021 12:50 am

StructuralBIMGuy

Opinions without data and proofs are worthless, ie Opinions can't be used for compliance and certification
For energy track down an environmental engineer and do simulations on your House
I have concluded in WA (Moderate Climate) it's a waste of money here
Ground Temperature recovery systems
BTW, Nobody cares about thermal (Breaks) when your slabs breaking up.
OT, You are better off investing in making sure your house doesn't move on reactive soils
Cheers
Chris

Yep, I came to the same conclusion regarding the Geothermal. We have room for about 8KW of solar panels, and can insulate as much as needed during the build which can cut down the need for geo in the first place.

Thermal breaks were more for the balcony connection to the house not the slab - since balcony faces west it's going to get hammered in the summertime.

Our initial rating was 6.5 Star, without any optimizations. Apparently should be fairly easy to get up around 8.