Homeowners in virtually every region of the United States are enjoying a high level of comfort and significantly reducing their energy use today with geothermal heating and cooling.
We often find that homeowners initially chose geothermal because of the cost savings, but after experiencing the outstanding comfort afforded by this technology, they often cite comfort as the their favorite aspect of the system.
Those who use geothermal systems give them superior ratings because of their ability to deliver comfortably warm air, even on the coldest winter days, and because of their extraordinarily low operating costs. As an additional benefit, geothermal systems can provide inexpensive hot water, either to supplement or replace entirely the output of a conventional, domestic water heater.
What about radiant heating?
Radiant floor heat is widely recognized as providing the highest comfort level compared to other methods of heat delivery. By nature, radiant floor heating achieves this outstanding comfort due to it’s ability to heat objects such as people and furniture, instead of heating the air in your home like traditional forced air heating systems.
Less draftiness, fewer hot and cold spots, less dust and even temperatures throughout your home are just a few of the benefits of radiant floor heating. But where does the heat come from? It comes from hot water. Traditional radiant floor heating systems utilize a fossil fuel or electric boiler to generate the needed hot water. These boilers can be very costly to operate compared to the efficiency of geothermal.
So let’s clarify. Radiant floor heat is simply a method of heat delivery into your home. We still need an efficient way to generate the hot water. That’s where geothermal comes in.
Geothermal systems produce hot water at an efficiency approaching 400%. By harvesting abundant amounts of heat from your own backyard, geothermal systems are widely recognized as providing the highest efficiency compared to other methods of generating hot water. The best fossil fuel boilers today have efficiency’s below 100%. Most are only 80-90% efficient. That means for every dollar of fuel purchased, 10-20 cents worth is lost up the chimney and wasted.