Geo-Exchange
People often confuse geothermal and geoexchange technologies and call them both Geothermal. This is a misnomer unless you live near one of the earths fault lines. Geothermal technology is actually a method of generating power through super heated water turning to steam and powering a turbine which generates energy. Geoexchange is a process of using the earth as one big heat sink for heating and cooling a building or home.
It’s one of the most incredibly simple and yet most efficient building technologies we have. One method involves burying a large loop underground with a fluid pumping through it that can very efficiently transfer heat. Since the ground beneath us tends to maintain a constant temperature regardless of the weather on the surface, it can be used as an enormous heat sink. In cooling seasons, the heat is removed from the structure and dumped into the ground and in the heating seasons, the ground loop picks up warmth from the earth and uses that to heat the structure. All of this basically relies on a small pump to move the fluid through the loop and you can see efficiencies of 300-400%. The key variable in cost depends on your location because you need to get the loop down to a depth where you have a constant temperature. In eastern Long Island that’s an easy 55 feet, but in downtown Manhattan for instance, someone had to drill through 1100 feet of bedrock to install this type of system for their townhouse.
This speaks to making a building as efficient as possible, this is not a renewable form of energy, it’s simply one of the most efficient means of heating and cooling a space using a mechanical system.
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