Geothermal Heating

When the heat of day becomes so high people tend to become very irritable. Now what is the use of heat besides making everyone a walking time bomb? Well, heat like everything else has also its benefits. If you didn’t know, geothermal heating or simply the use of the earth’s heat energy has already been discovered by the humans since the Paleolithic times. One good example is the oldest known hot spa discovered in Lisan mountain of China which was fed by a hot spring nearby. It was dated from 3rd century BC built by the Qin dynasty. Later on the Romans used this same kind of technology, only now it’s for public use and underfloor heating, the first known commercial use of the earth’s heat in 1st century AD. The use of this technology continued to develop up until now, being able to efficiently use even the slightest heat from the ground.

Lord Kelvin in 1853 first had the idea of a heat pump but it was Robert C. Webber who successfully implemented the geothermal heat pump with his home-made 2.2 kilowatt direct-exchange system. And the first commercial one was designed by J. Donald Kroeker. Heat pumps do two things. First is to absorb the heat from one area and transfer it to the desired area, it could be from the air, ground or water depending on model. Radiators and convectors are good examples for this. The second one is absorbing the heat from the desired area and transferring it to another area making the desired area cooler, one good example is an air conditioner. However of all the heat pumps geothermal heat pumps is far better for it extracts heat from the earth itself, the stable even heat of the earth.

This kind of heating system is now widely used overall the countries. With China its top users followed by Sweden, USA, Turkey, Iceland and Japan. This is mostly used for heating spaces from commercial building and residential establishments. It is also used for spas and other industrial and agricultural purposes. Some cities like Reykjavík and Akureyri even used this by melting the snows in their roads.

According to the surveys taken by the companies selling this magnificient machinery, geothermal heating ranks the best. Though its cost is somewhat very high compared to the others with an estimated value of $7,500, somewhat twice the price of the others. It is however recommended by 95% of its users. Now why wouldn’t they. Not only are they efficient and clean but it is very durable and requires a little maintenance. And being sheltered underground it is protected from almost all possible accidents.
 
Besides being very efficient and all, do Geothermal heating possess some disadvantages? This heating system especially the ones for big cities or industrial purposes requires to drill holes or make trenches underground and normally results to subsidence or uplifting. Subsidence is the lowering of the earth’s surface below sea level and uplifting is the lifting of the earth’s surface above sea level and if done in a wrong place can affect the buildings. One good example for this is the incident in Staufen im Breisgau, Germany where a subsidence of the ground occurred which is up to eight millimeters while other areas have been uplifted by a few millimeters. This caused a considerable damage to the surrounding buildings. But this kind of incident however is easily prevented if the soil is first checked by responsible people. The benefits of geothermal heating far outweigh its disadvantages. Imagine enjoying 25 to 50 Christmases with your families and friends without worrying about a single thing but your gifts of course.