Quote:
Originally Posted by Arminius
I'm planning a house that uses geothermal energy. As soon as we're sure that the kids are out on their own, we'll break ground.
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This may be semantics but I'll waste some keystrokes anyway. Technically speaking, a house that is well suited to geothermal is one that has been designed so that it can be heated with a very small heat differential. If using hydronics for the geothermal for example you are designing so that you can heat the house with lower water temps. That is exactly inline with what you need for an active solar system, and in essence, geothermal is solar heating, it's just that it is a stored form of solar energy. With the lower temperature requirements, the ability to harvest BTUs from wherever are much better because you don't have to rely so much on all of the energy spent on making harvested energy sources to have high enough temperatures to be useful.