Can this system be used in conjunction with a baseboard hot water system?Can anyone give me a ball park on the cost for a geothermal system for a 1600 sq ft house in North West New Jersey? I’m genuinely intrigued by this type of system but admittedly know very little about them.Thank you
You can use geothermal heat in New Jersey as long as it is provided by a heat pump. The above answer is more or less correct, the geothermal gradient (Q) in eastern North America is too low to get true geothermal heat, but a heat pump can use the earth as a sink to provide heating and cooling. You can use ground source or air source, obviously ground source is more expensive to install but uses less energy as the ground stays at a relatively constant temperature year round. You are looking at $10,000 to $15,000 to install and buy the equipment. That's a lot of money to invest, but it will pay off eventually especially wit increasing energy costs. You won't get much of a cooling effect from baseboards, but the heat exchanger will work fine with the baseboard system.
I'm fairly certain that there is no geothermic activity under New Jersey, so a system wouldn't do you any good.
I think you mean a Hydroponic heating floor system, where circulated hot water goes through many tubes in beded in the floor to heat the home. Check with home depot.
The system you are asking about takes advantage of the fact that the ground below a depth of a few meters is at the about the average annual air temperature for your area. If you install pipes to a couple hundred feet below ground, and use a heat exchanger to capture heat in the winter and discharge heat in the summer (capture cool, if you will), you can use this average ground temperature as a source of heating and cooling. The only cost is for the electrical energy of pumping and heat exchange, a lot less than using radiant heat and AC. it is relatively common in Scandanavia, according to what I understand. I only know of one residence that uses that system near where I live (it is for an expensive house that is the property of the owner of mega-blocks, according to the gossip line). this type of system has a high initial cost for installation, so whether it is economically feasible or not depends on your outlays for heating and cooling. It would be most beneficial for large buildings, of course, due to the dilution of installation costs and the high outlays for heating and cooling by more traditional methods.
Geothermal pumps water down into the ground where it is closer to the magma and thus the water gets warmed up (there does not need to be seismic activity in your area, like old faithful). Actually you need to provide the heat via some water circulation based heater. I'm not sure if baseboards (registers) would work, but I would think that they would. Now I am talking about base board registers, where water flows through them - electric base board heaters would not be able to use geothermal. It is far more common, however, to run these water pipes under the floor and run the heated water through those. I suspect that is more efficent than base boards anyway (not to mention safer). Geothermal is way cheaper - it will pay for itself within 15-20 years. I have no idea about the cost in New Jersey
