January 20, 2025
Heating Installation in Salem, OR

If your Salem, OR, home needs a new HVAC system, you have plenty of options. By far, the most efficient choice you can make is to install a geothermal HVAC model. However, those come with significant costs and represent a long-term investment in your home. Before you make that kind of commitment, it’s worth understanding more about how geothermal HVAC works. Here’s a complete explanation of geothermal HVAC so that you can decide if it’s a practical option for your home.

What Is Geothermal HVAC?

Geothermal HVAC systems aren’t very different from conventional air conditioners. Both use a refrigerant as a heat transfer medium. There are only two significant differences. One is that a geothermal system doesn’t depend on the outdoor environment for heat dissipation or collection. The other difference is that a geothermal system can operate in reverse.

How Do Geothermal HVAC Systems Work?

A geothermal HVAC consists of a heat pump and an underground refrigerant loop. In cooling mode, the system collects heat inside your home and deposits it into the ground around the buried loop. In heating mode, they extract heat energy from the ground around the loop and carry it indoors to warm the environment.

Using a buried refrigerant loop allows geothermal HVAC systems to offer year-round, high-efficiency operation. To understand why, you need to learn how heat pumps work. A heat pump is a machine that transports heat from one place to another. To do it, it relies on some basic scientific principles. One is that heat energy spontaneously moves from warm substances to cold ones. The other is that there’s a relationship between the pressure, state, and temperature of a liquid refrigerant.

That first scientific principle is the reason for the underground loop on which geothermal systems depend. If you dig just a few feet below the surface of the Earth, you’ll find stable temperatures between 40 and 70 degrees. That’s the perfect environment to absorb or release heat as needed. Geothermal systems take advantage of that using the second-mentioned operating principle. They use compressors and expansion valves to control their refrigerant’s pressure and, therefore, its temperature. By increasing the refrigerant’s pressure, its temperature also increases. Decreasing it causes the opposite reaction, causing it to grow cold.

In heat mode, a geothermal system lowers the pressure of the refrigerant and temperature before sending it underground. There, the cold refrigerant naturally absorbs heat from the surrounding ground. Then, the warm refrigerant passes through a compressor, making it much hotter to heat your home. In cooling mode, the system engages a reversing valve to change the flow direction of the refrigerant.

The Advantages of Geothermal HVAC

Geothermal systems have some fantastic advantages, making them an excellent option for many Salem homes.

Unbeatable Energy Efficiency

When it comes to energy efficiency, there’s nothing that compares to a geothermal HVAC. Air-source heat pumps, which use similar technology to geothermal ones, have a similar reputation. However, their efficiency depends on wildly fluctuating outdoor air temperatures. The efficiency of a heat pump is all about temperature differentials. The greater the difference between the refrigerant temperature and the surrounding environment, the more efficient the heat transfer process is. Geothermal systems take advantage of a much narrower operating temperature range found underground. That lets them operate at up to 600% efficiency all year round. They’re not affected by heat waves, blizzards, or anything in between.

Extremely Long Lifespans

Since geothermal heat pumps don’t have to deal with the harsh outdoor environment, they can last up to 20 years. The refrigerant loop of an average geothermal system will last about 50 years. As a result, you can realize some extreme savings over its lifespan. Not only will you save on operating costs, but you can re-use your ground loop when you need a new heat pump.

Quiet Operation

Another great benefit of geothermal HVAC systems is that they operate in an extremely quiet fashion. They have no outdoor components and won’t add noise pollution to your outdoor spaces. Their indoor components are no louder than the air handler of a conventional HVAC. Many even feature variable-speed operation, further enhancing efficiency and making them even quieter.

Available Tax Credits

Geothermal HVAC systems are an excellent way to cut your household’s carbon footprint. To encourage their installation, the Federal government offers tax credits to help defray their cost. Installing a geothermal system qualifies you for a tax credit worth 30% of your installation cost. It’s a non-refundable credit, but you can carry it forward for up to 10 years to maximize its benefit.

The Disadvantages of Geothermal HVAC

Geothermal HVAC systems have some drawbacks that have prevented their widespread use. Here’s what they are so you can weigh them accordingly.

High Upfront Costs

The biggest drawback to a geothermal HVAC system is cost. Installing one costs many times what you’d pay for a comparable conventional HVAC system. Most of the added expense comes from installing the necessary buried refrigerant loop. Depending on your property, getting the needed heavy equipment in place for an installation can be challenging. Plus, there are often restorative costs to get your landscaping back to its original state after an installation.

High Space Requirements

Two main ways exist to install the buried loop needed for a geothermal HVAC system. One is horizontal, which requires significant space on your property. For reference, the average 3-ton geothermal system requires 1,200 to 1,800 feet of horizontally buried coils. The other option is to use vertically drilled wells to place the necessary ground loops. They take up far less ground space but significantly increase upfront installation costs.

Requires Expert System Design

Finally, the benefits you derive from a geothermal HVAC system depend heavily on the skill of its designer. You can find stories all over the internet of homeowners with geothermal systems failing to live up to their promise. In virtually every case, the cause is an improperly installed or designed ground loop. The good news is that Woodward Heating Air Plumbing has a team of geothermal HVAC experts with ample design experience. We can ensure your home gets a geothermal system that meets its needs and maximizes energy savings.

Making the Best HVAC Choice

Geothermal HVAC is a perfect choice if you’re open to investing significantly in your household’s comfort and energy efficiency. Woodward Heating Air Plumbing can help you with a new geothermal system or a more conventional one for your Salem home. We offer complete heating installation, repair, and maintenance services. We also provide comprehensive plumbing services. Our team of HVAC technicians and plumbers have extensive training and years of practical experience. We also offer financing options on approved credit to help you pay for a new geothermal HVAC system. And we’re a registered Trade Ally with the Energy Trust of Oregon, so we’re energy efficiency experts!

So, if you’re considering a new geothermal HVAC for your Salem home, contact Woodward Heating Air Plumbing immediately!

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