DIY Ground Source Heat Pump
Rick Faszold decided to take on his very own geothermal ground source heat pump installation, A DIY project larger than anything he
had previously attempted in his 20 years of marriage. His main
objective was to complete the entire Geothermal ground source heat pump
domestic system within a budget of $10,000.00 USD. Considering
he was in receipt of quotations in excess of $25,000.00 USD he has
certainly set his targets high!
Richard Faszold's Geothermal DIY
Website
Why is Richard Faszold taking on such a huge challenge? Below are
his very own words....
The Short Answer - I want to save money, help the environment and
have a project/hobby that I could work on at home.
The longer answer is….. a few years ago, I began to look at the
solar power as way to reduce our energy bills. Our propane bill was
going up (same usage), our local electric utility went up a smidge
and we endured a few “longish” power outages. (Looking back over 4
years, our propane bill went up 40%!.) I thought solar would be a
way to pay one more time for power and be done with it forever. No
more bills, power outages and wasted refrigerator items.
As I looked down the road to retirement, it occurred to me that our
current (2007) energy bill of $4,400, would probably double by the
time I retired. (We live in a 2,100 sq/ft home.) Taking an estimate
of $8,800 annually for energy costs at retirement, ten years of
energy cost into retirement would be tough to deal with. Perhaps
this amount is too much or not enough for you, this is merely a
guess as to what could be. We felt that trying to compensate for
this bill by saving more for retirement would have too much of a
negative impact on our budget. So, I started looking for ways to
deal with this issue.
I started with solar first. It seemed simple and it would be able to
do everything we needed it to do. Just purchase a bunch of panels
and no more electrical bills. Move to electric heating and a nice
generator (for rainy days) and all is well. Unfortunately, part of
the solar calculation is Peak Kilowatt Hours or what your peak
energy demands are. From there you size the system to meet your peak
needs. Along the way you increase capacity to compensate for winter
(less hours of sun) and lost efficiencies. Meeting our peak needs
would have costs us about $35,000 upfront. (2006 costs) This was far
too expensive. The solar folks know that it is important to weather
proof as much as possible, buy different appliances, and make some
lifestyle changes in order to reduce the cost of a system. This is
wise; but, not workable for our family. Again, it would be a budget
issue or a lifestyle problem that we faced.
As of July of 2007, solar was really ramping up to the point where
there were world wide shortages of photovoltaic panels and prices
increases. Various countries have committed to utilizing this power
and manufacturing facilities just did not see this type of demand
coming. It will be well into 2009 before enough manufacturing comes
online to meet demand and reduce prices. Also, there are some
exciting new technologies that promise to increase the overall
conversion efficiency by two fold.
What I was really trying to do with solar was to never pay another
utility bill again. Since solar was not working out financially, I
took a harder look at our energy bill and broke it down into a few
categories to see what I was really dealing with. I realized that
our heating bill was roughly $2,200 annually (propane and going up
very quickly) and our summer cooling bill was over $1,000, thus our
heating and cooling alone were about 75% of our energy needs. I felt
that if I could find a cost effective way to take care of heating
and cooling, then I might be able to go back to solar. In searching
through the Internet, I stumbled upon Geothermal.
Geothermal, “seemed” simple and cheap. (It is neither.) I jumped at
wanting to get a geo system until I started getting bids that were
north of $25,000. $25,000 is still too expensive plop down for 75%
of our energy needs. Yes, it “seemed” to pay for itself over time
(Nine year ROI); but, it really didn’t financially do everything I
hoped it would do. It was cheaper than solar; but, not that much
cheaper. So, this was very depressing. I thought I would be stuck
paying utility companies forever.
As I was surfing around, I found a gentleman who said he did his geo
system by himself AND did it for under $7,000! (That was in the
later 90’s.) $7,000 is definitely budgetable and has a very nice ROI
considering a current $3,200 a year heating and cooling bill.
An interesting note is that a 1998 study by the EPA indicates that
for every $1 reduction in energy cost, the value of the home rises
by $20. It would be nice if they would update this study a bit in
light of current energy costs and the sub-prime market melt down.
This is 1998 dollars AND since the stock market is going nuts due to
the sub-prime meltdown, I have no idea of what this means.
Note: As of February 2009, we decided to re-finance our home. Our
appraiser gave NO added value to the house due to the ground source heat pump.
This began quite a while of searching and talking to folks about geo
in order to get to a point where I felt comfortable doing this
myself. Thus, I began my own geo project.
The only thing that I can offer to you is… ask a LOT of questions
and know that if you do this, you will still miss something…
Hopefully, it will not be big.