What is geothermal heating and cooling?
Geothermal heating and cooling is becoming increasingly known as geo-exchange. It is a way of harvesting the constant, uninterrupted flow of solar energy that is directly stored in the earth. EarthLinked® systems take the energy and use it to create a more stable environment for the heat itself. They then move the heat using a closed copper loop of environmentally friendly refrigerant into your home. This ensures that your house stays at a comfortable temperature year-round.
EarthLinked Renewable Energy System
with diagonal earth loops.
How does the EarthLinked geothermal system work?
The heat pump of an EarthLinked geothermal system drives heat into the house in the winter and pulls heat from the house into the ground in the summer.
What are the differences between traditional air conditioners and heaters and EarthLinked geothermal systems?
We’re taking the copper coils that are wrapped around a fan in a typical outdoor unit and stretching them out. We’ve eliminated the outdoor fan and instead put those coils, or earth loops as they’re called with our system, into the ground.
In essence, when it’s 95°F outside, your air conditioner at home is working extremely hard to extract the heat from your house. It’s pulling the heat energy from the house and exhausting it into the already hot ambient air. In contrast, the EarthLinked geothermal system is exhausting that same heat into the 55°F ground. This is much more efficient and the heat transfer is more rapid which increases the overall efficiency of the system.
The same holds true in heating mode. Traditional heat pumps work by extracting heat from the air outside. Their compressors have to work extremely hard to pull heat from the 32°F air, per say. EarthLinked geothermal systems are extracting heat instead from the 65°F earth. It doesn’t have to work as hard to get the job done, which is where EarthLinked’s efficiency really proves itself.
Not only have we eliminated the need for an outdoor fan, our systems do not need to run defrost cycles during the winter which traditional systems run several times a day. Because our coils aren’t exposed to the elements that outdoor systems experience, they are not subjected to the moisture and frigid conditions that freeze coils. When coils freeze over, the unit has to stop heating the house and reverse its process to go into cooling mode—sending hot refrigerant through that outdoor coil which melts the ice. Our earth loops see a constant temperature and therefore never have to deal with weather, a difference you’ll see in your bill. The elimination of the defrost cycles means the system isn’t doing as much counterproductive work that costs you money.
