If you spend any time on the Sensible Heating & Cooling website, you will quickly run across the words geothermal heat pump. It might be useful to explain why we decided to base a large part of our business around it. The CliffsNotes? Geothermal heat pump systems are simply the best way to stabilize a comfortable climate in your home.
But Why?
Geothermal heat pump systems are the most efficient option on the market because they rely on a naturally occurring, more stable source of heat as a foundation.
While traditional furnace and AC setups constantly run hard in order to modify the temperature of the physically unstable air around you (we are working with extra thin air in the range of below zero to 100-degrees plus here), geothermal heat pumps instead draw their source heat from the ground. Below the first 20 feet of earth, the temperature stays a pretty constant 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and much like a cave, the shallower ground above those depths will stay warmer than the air in the winter and cooler than the air in the summer.
So in utilizing the earth as our major heat source for the temperatures in your home, your furnace and air conditioning coil can take a load off since their starting to destination point is significantly reduced. This ratio of less work to the harder work of a traditional air-based system gets more and more pronounced the more extreme the weather gets. Since the only way that humans have figured out how to change the air temperature with any speed, is with a fuel source (i.e., $$$), so how about a little less?
And How?
You get now that with a more stable heat source the components have to work less to achieve a moderate temperature that is comfortable for people. But what exactly is going on here?
The key concept here is heat exchange. Since the ground naturally stays at pretty-middle-of-the-road temperatures, the geothermal heat pump can act more dynamically than your over-worked, single-minded furnace and AC of old (god bless them). Instead, the geothermal heat pump leverages air exchange to allow our earthen heat source to change roles based on whether you want your home warm or cool. The ground becomes a heat source in the winter time, kindly giving all of that desired warmth to you and your loved ones, and in the summer, the ground welcomes all that unwanted warmth in and becomes a heat sink.
Color Me Impressed
With increased technology often comes increased complexity – which means to me and you that more can break and go wrong. But fortunately, this is not exactly so with geothermal heat pumps since we are simply improving the foundational heat source that your equipment is working with. There is nothing new about using heat pumps (similar technology exists in your refrigerator and traditional AC unit). And
when it comes to tapping into the stable heat source of the ground for operation, many cost-saving and environmentally-conscious commercial applications are out there. But when the technology was made available to the residential HVAC industry, after 20-plus years in the industry, we jumped in head first, knowing that the industry truly was making strides into the 21st Century–bigger ideas, smaller footprints.
Established in 2009, Sensible Heating & Cooling has proudly grown into Colorado’s leading experts in geothermal heat pump systems, helping customers both optimize their home climates and rely much less on unstably priced, non-renewable fuel sources. Many are seeing a return on their investment in a geothermal heat pump system and due to word of mouth, we had to get bigger appointment books!
Please reach out to us! We offer free consultation in new geothermal systems, and also offer solutions to retrofit traditional systems with geothermal technology. Call us at 720-876-7166 or email the owner at [email protected].
