condition of Geothermal heating systems as a way to increase environmental friendliness
Something for nothing is something we all want. We all want a free lunch, even though philosophers tell us there’s no such thing. Sometimes, however, we can get a cheap lunch, or at least the illusion of a cheap lunch. In the area of heating and air conditioning, time and invention are bringing us closer to this cheap lunch. Northern Kentucky geothermal and Greater Cincinnati heating and air conditioning are working hard to bring this reality to the mid-West.
What constitutes a free lunch in the area of the heating and air conditioning system? It is a matter of of taking heat that already exists and moving it where it’s needed. This idea of using existing heat began when the heat pump was developed. It seems to go against logical thinking that on a cold day, the house can be heated by the cold outside. It becomes more understandable when you remember that there is no such thing as cold in physics. What we feel as cold is, in truth, just a lower level of heat. Knowing this, we can picture just how a heat pump can keep the house warm by bringing outdoor heat indoors. Looking at the reverse, it is just as counter-intuitive that the summer heat in the kitchen can be transferred outdoors into an even hotter summer afternoon. But, as we all know, it works.
The next evolutionary step is geothermal heating and cooling. While the heat pump utilizes the heat of the air, the geothermal system works with the heat of the earth. When this type of system is installed for a house, lengths of metal tubing are buried in the ground, going in either a horizontal or vertical direction, depending on the layout of the house and the lot. Another possible configuration anchors the loops of coil into the bottom of a pond. Heat from the ground can be transferred into the house. The way this works is that fluid runs through these loops of tubing, extracting the heat of the ground. When transferred to the geothermal unit, the unit compresses this heat to give a high temperature that is circulated throughout the house. When summer comes, this transfer is reversed to cool the house.
Geothermal heating and cooling is most commonly used in the most obvious places, where the earth is the hottest. Where are these locations? Around the edges of the earth’s tectonic plates. The tectonic plates are the immense chunks of rock that make up the continents of the earth and that float on the underlying asthenosphere. Around the edges of the plates are the thermally active areas of the world where earthquakes and volcanoes are experienced. This great heat can be used for geothermal heating and cooling. Now that this system has evolved, it is applicable in more stable areas of the earth, including our mid-West.
That there are no free lunches is still true, but the lunch is getting cheaper as heat pumps and geothermal heating and cooling are developed and become more widespread. As they develop further and become more widely used, we can expect that they will become a more economical choice for our homes.
