I don’t have enough space for a horizontal loop so I had to go vertical. The pipes are not PEX exactly but a similar flexible plastic material. Probably 2” diameter. It was pretty expensive but partly because I live in a cold climate. I was already looking at swapping from a gas furnace to an air source heat pump but the heat pumps that function in cold weather are pretty expensive.
I was going to have to get a new AC unit as well. I also ended up going with a unit that has a desuperheater for hot water. Once you add up costs for a new furnace, AC, and hot water, then subtract the 30% federal tax credit from the cost of the geothermal install it wasn’t as much of a difference as I would have guessed.
All that to say, our situations are different but if you have space for a horizontal loop and a relatively small house I think you could make it work with a repurposed heat pump and some manual labor. I definitely would have considered that if I had more land to work with.
Yah, I’m where air-to-air wouldn’t work for at least a couple months of the year without a gas furnace, so was considering burying loops a couple meters down, below frostline. I have as much space as I want, so horizontal would be fine. But the 20k for an air to glycol pump, even to buy and install myself seems crazy, it’s not rocket surgery. Put an extra valve on an airconditioner and triple the price it seems.
I don’t have enough space for a horizontal loop so I had to go vertical. The pipes are not PEX exactly but a similar flexible plastic material. Probably 2” diameter. It was pretty expensive but partly because I live in a cold climate. I was already looking at swapping from a gas furnace to an air source heat pump but the heat pumps that function in cold weather are pretty expensive.
I was going to have to get a new AC unit as well. I also ended up going with a unit that has a desuperheater for hot water. Once you add up costs for a new furnace, AC, and hot water, then subtract the 30% federal tax credit from the cost of the geothermal install it wasn’t as much of a difference as I would have guessed.
All that to say, our situations are different but if you have space for a horizontal loop and a relatively small house I think you could make it work with a repurposed heat pump and some manual labor. I definitely would have considered that if I had more land to work with.
Yah, I’m where air-to-air wouldn’t work for at least a couple months of the year without a gas furnace, so was considering burying loops a couple meters down, below frostline. I have as much space as I want, so horizontal would be fine. But the 20k for an air to glycol pump, even to buy and install myself seems crazy, it’s not rocket surgery. Put an extra valve on an airconditioner and triple the price it seems.