Results tagged “heat pump” from Green Mesh

My house and almost every house has a heat pump system built in, in fact, the heat pump design built into my house is centuries old.

"Heat pumps" use freon, a compressor and electronics to transfer heat between the inside and outside of your house. In the case of a geothermal system, between the ground and the inside of your home.

I keep my house at about 60 degrees and the upstairs drops into the high 50's (shut off a zone and closed doors). On Fall days like today (67 degrees at the moment), I open all the windows and the basement door during the day and the heat pumps into the house using the natural forces of nature. The stone in the basement absorbs in the heat during the day. The basement, built into a hillside, has a ground floor door.

Likewise in the summer, I use a small attic fan to pull cool air up and through my house at night evacuating the hottest attic air first and then close the windows during the day. The well insulated windows and walls hold temperatures. I like fresh air and hate air conditioning.

Older home designs are usually quite green in their structural design although modern insulating materials weren't available. The least efficient home design is the sprawling single story ranch with massive wall and roof areas (increases water run-off too) that radiate heat. The non-centralized living design doesn't take advantage of concentrating the heat we generate in cooking, appliances and lighting.

My small, 2 1/2 story row house has a shared common brick firewall that allows heat from my neighbor's house and common chimney to radiate three stories into my house. Stacked floors reduce outside wall surface area and concentrate the heat generated by normal living.

In the Summer, corner rooms with tall windows allow air flow and the ability to vent from the top and bottom of the window. Corner rooms with multiple windows allow airflow. The tall narrow nature of the structure allows a natural chimney effect though attic windows channeling heat up and out in summer. Lower floors are far away from the hot attic.

Trinity United Methodist in New Freedom, Pa., has exchanged its natural-gas-fired boiler for a geothermal heating system drawing energy from 450 feet underground. The system should reduce the church's energy costs by an estimated 70 percent.

"Why not use what's in God's Earth to heat and cool his house?" said Anne Duff, a Trinity member

And just in time as a 6% rate increase has been approved by Columbia Gas customers has been approved by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission beginning tomorrow.

Typically, it takes four to eight years to recoup the investment, depending on the type of the existing system, according to R.R. Kling & Sons.

A geothermal system works like an air conditioning system. However, instead of transferring energy with the outside air, energy is transferred with the ground.

The ground temperature remains 53 degrees in southcentral Pennsylvania year round. This means that when the temperature is 90 or 20 degrees outside, the geothermal system can transfer heat to and from the ground more efficiently. A standard heat pump that transfers energy to the outside air becomes less efficient as the temperature outside drops.

The earth provides a stable temperature for maximum efficiency.
original story from inyork.com/ydr