- Let's talk about Country Living
You might want to look into the particulars of the geothermal and how it works. The theory is that once you four feet down below ground level the temperature holds constant. In many places that's around 50 degrees. You can extract heat from the ground with the right equipment.
It's a bit exotic. That usually translates into heating equipment that's expensive and complicated. It's a job to find anyone qualified to work on it and critical repair parts can end up on backorder -or- simply not be available anymore.
One of the big things that gained popularity when energy prices went up was the pellet stove. It's a fairly simple machine but i know quite a few homeowners that are having problems getting parts & service when they break down.
One of my neighbors has a Renai. It's got to be pushing 94% efficiency but the control board failed because of a power surge. That's a 375.00$ dollar repair part.
This past week i got called in to troubleshoot a wood stove that wouldn't draw. A wood stove is about the simplest thing you would run into but it was one of the fancy high performance / low emission stoves. The customer couldn't figure it out so he contacted the place that he bought it from but they didn't have a clue either. It turned out that the air inlet chamber system was plugged with ash.
One of the health care facilities that i worked for had a solar hot water system where the panels literally blew up. A control board failed and pumped cold water up into glass tubes in the collectors that were already pre-heated to over 400 degrees. The system was off line for about four months while the repair parts were being fabricated back at the factory.
Moral of the story: Keep it Simple Sam. A house is one of the biggest purchases that you'll ever make. It's one thing if you've got all kinds of money. You can afford to play with all of the new things out there. Some of them are really neat ! If they don't work out it's really no big deal.You just pay somebody to repair or replace it.
Otherwise .... you're a lot better off to stay with technology that's well proven to work reliably for years on end with little or no upkeep.
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