I'm using geothermal to 'heat' my basement. The floor slab and the bottom
six feet of the basement walls constantly emit heat at around 65 degrees.
Last winter, I never turned on the circulator pump in the basement.
It stayed cool down there all winter. Right around 65-67 degrees.
There is some heat loss from the oil burner and over-head pipes, but the
main source of heat is the floor.
I'm dying to install the 2-ton Sanyo Mini-Split.
If seems like an ASHP being used for heating is kinda a hybrid.
Since, it's using the heat in the air, where does that heat come from? I think there are two main sources.
Solar and Geothermal.
The sun heats up the air every morning. And the warmth from the earth works it's way up to the surface, also heating the air.
The nice thing about the Sanyo ASHP, is the ground surface of 32 degrees is warming the air up to 32!!
If the air coming into the ASHP is a smoking hot 32 degs, then my
system is going to be able to crank out 25,000 BTUh of warmth.
And, for a mere 2.5KWh, or 50 cents an hour until the house is all warmed up and coasting.
Then it might be possible to hold 70 inside, using only 290 watts to suck in 4,400 BTUh of heat.. 6 cents an hour?
Wow, I hope this thing works to spec! Maybe we could get away with 2 oil fills a year!
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Since a mini-split seems to work almost as well as a WSHP, but only
cost a fraction as much, why not skip digging expensive holes and
just suck the heat right out of thin air??
