Does a geothermal heat pump system have the heating/cooling capacity to work in a poorly insulated home?
Answer:
Here's how you would use a geothermal heat pump (I am going to assume water is your medium) that we will call WSHP - Water Source Heat Pump.
1. Figure out the heat load or heat gain into your home. If you need help calculating that, get a "manual J" program by searching the net, or higher an engineering company.
2. purchase a WSHP that has the capacity to overcome the heat gain into your house and maintain approx 75 deg. Again, getting an engineering company involved is best here.
3. Have the unit installed by a contractor. If sized and installed correctly, you should be able to cool your house permanently on a WSHP via geothermal heat discharge.
Upgrade the insulation.
Depends on the environment outside of the building, the capacity of the system and the resevoir the system is going to draw from. Theoretically you could build a geo system with enough capacity to heat a canvass lean-to in January in Point Barrow so you could sit around in shorts and a T-shirt. If your house is in the southern quarter of the deep south a reasonable system may handle 70% of the winter days. Don't throw out your fireplace yet!
While it would be best to upgrade the insulation, if one used a larger unit than would be needed in a well insulated home, one could heat/cool a poorly insulated home. However,depending on the weather patterns, it might be more practical to have axillary units for exceptionally hot/cold days it they are relatively infrequent, rather than oversizing the main system, but this would depend on the local conditions Note that there would be higher operating costs forever with the lager system, while upgraded insulation is a one time expense, albeit possibly a high one in an old home, particularly if a historic one where replacing windows might be an issue. You need to consider the payback carefully, keeping in mind energy costs will only increase.
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