ᐅ Geothermal heat exchanger if you already need to raise the ground level by 1 meter?

Hello,

Until now, I was fairly certain that I wanted to install a gas condensing boiler with solar thermal and, for comfort reasons, a centralized controlled residential ventilation system with heat recovery in my new build.

Geothermal energy with deep drilling was too expensive for me, and an air-to-water heat pump did not convince me conceptually for winter use.

However, my plot needs to be raised by about 1 meter or 1.2 meters (3.3 feet or 3.9 feet) anyway. It is approximately 500 m² (5,382 ft²) in size, and the soil is sandy, soil class 3.

The topsoil will have to be pushed aside before raising the ground, but I have no idea to what depth. What do you think about installing a heat pump with a ground collector now? Wouldn’t that be a good option? How does this technology compare in terms of efficiency and initial costs?

Best regards,
Aloadihoa

You need to know the building’s heating load calculation, and of course also the built-up areas.

We initially planned that too, but it wouldn’t have worked for us – our plot is only slightly bigger, but the heat demand couldn’t have been met with that.

If it fits, the efficiency is similar to a deep borehole, and the initial costs are very low – depending on whether you do some of the work yourself. I’m no longer keen on installing the typically 300m (985 feet) of PE pipe by now 😀

Sebastian has already said most of it. I didn’t find laying the pipes that complicated, but you need to prepare thoroughly and have helpers.

Whether it will work well in your case, you can check and read about extensively in the forum mentioned by Sebastian.

Also, you should definitely set aside several hours to study the information there.