What would heat my house the best?

How much is that?

I was looking at $20k here (before taxes) when I was looking a few years ago. That was for the ground loop stuff & the unit. Didn't include anything on the distribution side, where I would have needed some serious changes & retrofits.

Didn't realize Harmans were that pricey.

maple1 said:

How much is that?

I was looking at $20k here (before taxes) when I was looking a few years ago. That was for the ground loop stuff & the unit. Didn't include anything on the distribution side, where I would have needed some serious changes & retrofits.

Didn't realize Harmans were that pricey.

Click to expand...

About 16-20k before the tax rebate and not doing anything except writing a check. Depending on the house configuration it could be cheaper. You get nearly 50% back depending on your state and local rebates.

According to my state's website:

The Federal incentive covers 30% of the expenditures in the year the incentive is taken, up to a cap of $2,000 if the property was installed prior to January 1, 2009. Qualifying geothermal heat pump property installed after December 31, 2008 is eligible for 30% of the installed cost without a cap, as provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009 (ARRA) . The incentive is available for taxpayers installing qualifying equipment at their primary residence or a second home, but not for a rental property. This incentive is available till December 2016

Your electric company may offer an incentive - mine doesn't though, so check first.

Your town may offer some sort of tax rebate - in NH it is only allowed to be tax neutral (town can only rebate as much as the improvement would enhance the property value).

So say it is a $21,000 for equipment & install (in my dreams, but the number makes it easy), basically for me the federal incentive would take care of $7,000 - leaving $14,000 for me to cover. Well, that isn't strictly true, I have to cover the $21,000 then get a tax credit for $7,000

Funny thing - I went to a Geothermal savings calculator, and it doesn't even list my state. Another, Excel calculator claims it could save me $2,300 per year (I don't spend nearly that much on heat and hot water for year). To be fair, it was only comparing cost to propane since they ignored anything that wasn't oil, NG or propane.

I forgot to add that my $800 per year cost includes my domestic hot water for 5 months of the year. I use propane for the other 7 months of the year.

So I just used the calculator, putting in Maine as my state (they don't have NH or VT). The town is Bangor (the only option) and they think I use $3,600 to heat my house and another $1k to produce hot water. So, they are saying I use $4,600 between the two. To be fair, they don't have the wood pellet option, so I had to put in propane which they are projecting at $2.78/gal (again, in my dreams) - and the heating cost would probably be pretty accurate judging from when I didn't have a pellet stove.

In actuality, even at last year's "high" pellet prices, I paid $1,250 (if I actually get to 5 tons of usage before summer hits) for pellets burned and $500 (150 gallons per year) for the propane for hot water and running the old boiler when I needed to keep FHW pipes from freezing. If their projection of heating & hot water costs using geothermal is anywhere close (and who knows how close or far they are?), I would pay about $1,600 per year. In my circumstance, that is a savings of $50 per year.

Geothermal may make sense for some, but according to the numbers not for me. For new construction, it is probably a good option (although one wonders why they don't have VT or NH in the calculator - is it cost prohibitive for the drilling?). Maybe in Ohio, where the OP lives, it is a better deal. Not bashing geothermal - just saying do your homework using your exact circumstances before jumping on ANY type of heating that isn't already installed.

I came to the same conclusion, for my situation.