We've lived here for 4 and a half years, and only just today did someone bother to tell me how our heating system works. It's actually pretty cool. It draws heat from the earth, until the earth is too cold. Then and only then, the heat strips (yeah, I know) trigger the something-or-other to turn on in order to compensate for the cold... uh... a filament, or something...
Whatever, the heating dude came over, looked things over and discovered that the whatevers were unplugged. WTF!? Who unplugged them? When?
Jebus Crast, I'll never understand this. It sounds like a really cool thing, but while we've lived here, I've had to call them at the onset of winter to fix the heat, and at the onset of summer to fix the air. I'm just glad we're renters; the landlord has to pay the bill, not us! And if this Geothermal system is supposed to be so green and so wonderful, then why are our bills never lower than $300 a frickin' month? This month it was $400. Shit howdy!
Anyway, we're warm again and I was able to remove the three layers of clothing I've been wearing. Well, I left one on. I wouldn't want to frighten the kids.
My sister and brother in-law have geothermal heat. He explained it to me like a child over Thanksgiving. Very cool.
ReplyDeleteWow! I'm impressed! We have the old boiler method with radiators. Works fine in this drafty old house. And as an added plus, I use the radiators to dry wet boots, mittens and let dough rise on them.
ReplyDeleteHehe, my father in law was going to put geothermal into his shop till he found out how much it was going to cost, more than the shop itself, around 18K. Didn't seem worth it.
ReplyDeleteThe large part of the cost was not the piping in the floor nor the pipes in the ground, but rather the heat exchange unit to put in the building to transfer the heat or cool from the water in the pipes circulated in the ground to the pipes circulated in the building floor.
yep its a heat exchanger. for heating it works kind of like a refrigerator in reverse.
ReplyDeletegotta be something wrong if its costing that much to run thou. yikes!
Definately something wrong if your energy costs are so high. The whole thing with the geothermal unit is to be more green and use less energy to heat or cool.
ReplyDeleteI hate it! We have some rooms in the house that are like ovens in the summer and in turn are like freezers in the winter. Poor Heather is never comfortable. She's burning up in the summer and freezing in the winter. Our room upstairs is always hot--both winter and summer. We've been told that the unit wasn't installed properly and that there isn't much that can be done about it. I'm really pissed that it costs us so much every month to heat and cool our house. It's a real money pit!
ReplyDelete"Shit howdy"?...lmao. That's a new one. glad you guys are warm and toasty again!
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