Technical > Home Improvement > Do Air Conditioners and Heat Pumps cool equally well?

read what you posted. the inlet water temps are the problem. get them down during the cooling season and the lost efficiency returns plus the lower pump draw equals more efficient. 2+2 still equals 4 no funny math needed it's all right there. do what you want with your water there. in the end the difference in the bill is going to maybe be $10-15/m depending on your electric rates. for me the closed loop isn't nearly as much about my power bill is it is about the wanton wasting of good water so i can be cool.

There is also non-monetary considerations such as can the well support the demands, what to do with the discharge water, water quality, etc.

talking about drinkable water resources. it takes many many years for the aquifer recharge cycle to take place. that's where it's wasted.

I'm using an open loop geothermal system.

In the coldest months in Michigan I use about $250 to $300 worth of electricity.

I'm on a 4" well about 65' deep that can supply two showers and the geothermal all at the same time. We are using about $100 of electricity for the lights, tv's, and other appliances, meaning I'm heating my house for $150 to $200 a month. (Day's can be really short so the lights are on longer.)

The outside discharge loop runs a to a drainage tile system that is also used by our septic system. Keeps the grass green in the back yard...

The water table around here is about 10 -20 feet down and we have many swamps, ponds, streams, and rivers. (this is west MI after all).

In this system the water is never exposed directly to the air since all the piping and drainage systems are underground. While a farmer watering his crops will be loosing water to evaporation, a properly installed geothermal system will have very little water wasted in that fashion.

I would have no issues with anyone withdrawing water from an aquifer for geothermal using this system.

The outside discharge loop runs a to a drainage tile system that is also used by our septic system.

The water table around here is about 10 -20 feet down and we have many swamps, ponds, streams, and rivers. (this is west MI after all).

You have your open loop heat pump discharge piped into your septic drain field which is only about 10 - 20 feet above the water table?

You do realize all that water causes the sewage to peculate (wash) into the groundwater contaminating it. Around here it would be illegal to pipe anything like this into the drain field.

Heat Pumps don't work well above 80F or below 20F - at least in the Mid-US. Swamp coolers do not work in humid areas. If you want to be warm and cool you use a device that heats and a device that cools or a single device that can do either.

What you call misuse I call using the resource to it's full potential. If I pump roughly a million gallons a year from the aquifer to heat and cool my house while the farmer next door is pumping a million gallons a week from the same aquifer to water his field I don't see how I am misusing anything.

If the air temperature for an air source and the water temperature for a geothermal are equal then the efficiency for both are roughly exactly equal. A high efficiency air source may have an edge given it's larger coil surface vs the small heat exchanger surface area for a geothermal.

the newer geo units at least from FHP are also variable speed blowers and multi-stage compressors all the same regulating tech that is available on air to air is being applied to geo still giving geo the edge due to waters greater ability to move energy. i honestly don't know much about what water furnace and the other guys are doing but i do know that FHP was bought by bosch some time ago and the stuff they are building now is even better than the stuff they made before which was already high quality.