Geothermal heating and cooling booming

NY Times:

The business for ground-source heat pumps is so hot that when some people driving in and around Seattle see Gerard Maloney’s EarthHeat van, with the company’s phone number on the side, they call from their cellphones. “Really, we have people doing this,” Mr. Maloney said.

Like other energy alternatives, ground-source heat pumps have won new admirers as energy costs have skyrocketed.

The pumps, also called geothermal heat pumps, use the relatively constant temperature just below the earth’s surface — six feet below, in many cases — to draw warm air into a building in winter and remove warm air in summer. Advocates say the systems can save building owners 25 percent to 65 percent on energy costs while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Around the nation, owners of the small businesses that constitute most of the $2.5 billion ground-source heat pump industry report that demand for their systems and services has surged.

“We started as many jobs by April of 2008 as we had done in all of 2007,” said Bruce Wollaber, president of Comfort Engineered Systems in Nolensville, Tenn., a designer and installer of heat pump systems. Bill Beattie, co-owner of Rockford Geothermal in Rockford, Ill., said, “If we stay on track, we’re probably going to grow by about 40 percent this year.”

All this comes with some growing pains for the industry, which has its sights set on capturing 30 percent of the heating and air-conditioning market by 2030. System manufacturers have a backlog of orders, installers say. Trained workers are increasingly difficult to come by. Still, said Jim Bose, executive director of the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association, an industry and advocacy group, “it’s not a pipe dream. It can be done.”

The systems use a network of water-filled pipes laid either horizontally (6 feet under) or vertically (often 200 to 300 feet down), that attach to a heat exchanger.

The technology can be used almost anywhere, on any type of building. “We’ve got them all the way from Texas to the Arctic Circle,” said Mr. Bose, a professor of engineering technology at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.

...

There are several installations in Texas including one at a very famous address in Crawford, Texas. It is part of the highly efficient system the president included when he built his ranch house.

Ten years ago when I built my house the payback was not as quick as it is now. When I replace my current system, I will look at it again. I think I can save on installation cost now because the pipe used can be put at the bottom of a pond I have recently added which will save on the digging cost.