trenching a site is a 10x more expensive than drilling, but only consider trenching if there is not ground water to extract (and return no water is consumed) so there is no alternative perhaps for this site
geothermal is more efficient than solar, (than anything, efficiencies of 500% are easy, up to 700% in the showplaces) the proposal for our eleven unit building to use geothermal heat, is run by a 375 watt fridge motor, even the waste heat from the motor would be recovered as heat, so wouldn't take much panel to power it
solar heat can only get out what is in the sun, least in mid winter when you need most, most in summer when you need none,and would need a lot of panels, a lot of storage tanks, to store the hot water
solar electricity to run a much smaller heat pump is viable
Our costs/quotes are much lower because the piping and radiators are installed
but damn, 20k is a lot
real insulation would help, the heat pumps required would be smaller, airtight in walls floors and ceilings instead of the gappy crappy missing jobs I have seen here, [noparse][rant] foil is not insulation, you cook with it, so it aint heat-proof [/rant][/noparse]. Like
this insulation, if Aus gets
holmes on homes TV fixit show, you see it every episode
not 15[sup]o[/sup] as a heating temperature, 100billion tonnes @ 15[sup]o[/sup] of heatsink for the refrigerator motor to pull heat out of, or push heat into when heating cooling,
the kitchen freezer does not need -5[sup]o[/sup] it just pushes heat from the cold box to the outside, ditto as I understand it
If using a combustion stove, water jacket the chimney for extra hot water supply, (my grandma's house) may as well use all the old good ideas as well as the new good ideas
HiEquity said:
Building new gives you an insurmountable disadvantage in sustainability - it means you can never get over the embodied energy of the building materials you use. The existing product alternative will always be more sustainable even if just lightly insulated and poorly positioned because no new bricks / concrete etc had to be manufactured to make it! Concrete, timber and bricks aren't exactly environmentally friendly to make...
get abused by rabid greens when I say something similar, green but want carbon-fiber windmills, PV panels. Support the coal-fired power industry, melt tonnes of sand, electrically purifiy it, dope it with toxic metallic poisons, wrap it in a coccon of refined metal and oil-base polymer, to be
environmentally responsible?
do it because you want to, because there are no ongoing expenses, because soon enough there may not be an alternative, but 55 years payback time, dont crack a panel, do it to cap expenses.
this is one link to the no-electricity heating fan
Lady
Love mentioned in her post,