Originally Posted by
Darell_n
Geothermal is good for air conditioning homes as it keeps compressor head pressures lower during the summer than possible with traditional air cooled equipment. (use less power). The problem is with heating. I would make an educated guess that a typical house in Alberta uses 10% cooling and 90% heating over a yearly average of total BTUs used. (I’m sure there’s actual data out there). Geothermal is good for lightly warming building but can’t do much in our winters, so you end up extensively using the auxiliary electrical strip heaters and get outrageous power bills. Then the reliability and complexity comes into play. Any mechanically inclined home owner can change a pressure switch or igniter in a furnace, not some much for troubleshooting and repairing a refrigeration compressor with often commercial quantities of refrigerant.
Summmary: heat pumps good in warm climates, stupid in cold climates. Heat reclaim in Alberta would be great, as in capturing wasted heat from a/c in the Summer to heat domestic water / pool, same goes for capturing heat in waste water from showers and major appliances. Solar heating great too for domestic water.