For those of you happy with your geothermal systems, do you mind sharing the total installation costs?
We got rough quotes in the 30 to $40,000 range when building our home in 2015 (ours would have been horizontal ground loops, exchanged to hydronic in slab), which made it pretty easy to choose the $1300 wood stove instead.
I already shared mine but will do so again.
I have 12k invested in a 4-ton 2-stage unit.
Got back $3600 via 30% fed credit
Another $1000 credit from electric coop
And another $400 from electric coop for new water heater to set up dual tanks, one as buffer.
So my total cost was $7k.
Would have saved $2500 if my house already had some type of forced air, because that's what just the ductwork cost as my house was baseboard heat and wood burner only before geo.
I installed everything myself except the ductwork. I had a backhoe to dig my loop field, but renting an ex for a day to still be a diy would have only been another $500 or so.
Part of the high cost of the system is the HVAC companies gouging people.
As long as there was a 30% credit.....that credit went to the HVAC companies....even though they made you feel good about getting it.
Because the cost of a conventional HVAC system, and the cost of a geo system are the same for all intents and purposes. They both have a furnace, a compressor, blower, and an evaporator. An air-source has a condenser with fan outside. A geo trades that for a pump center with manifolds.
Material cost is the same. But a geo doesn't need a refrigeration license as they are pre charged and no sweating lines to connect an outside and inside unit.
The biggest difference is the outside loop field which does add significant cost of you cannot DIY.
But I got 3 quotes before I did my own. All three quotes for for me doing the loop field and bringing in the house to manifolds. And all the HVAC companies I had quotes from don't even do their own loops. They contract them, so I was simply being the contractor.
My geo quotes came back in the $16k-$18k range. While a comparable 4-ton air source was in the $10k-$12k range.
Since I was doing the loop field, and ductwork inside would the same with either system, and labor IMO would actually be easier for geo on the contractors part since they set and plumb ONE unit in the basement rather than an indoor unit AND and outside unit ....this simply comes down to the only difference being the equipment.
And the cost of an air-source 4 ton furnace + outside compressor and condenser vs a 4-ton geo with pump center.....pennies difference in equipment cost. No where near the $4k-$6k difference I was seeing in my quotes.
So I asked all three contractors why the geo was so much more given that I was doing ALL the outside work and excavation.
All three had the exact same answer......
"Well it really isn't more expensive. Because you will get a 30% rebate, so it's actually about the same cost as the air to air. So for the same money, wouldn't you rather have geothermal?"
I sure would rather have geo, but because of the credit it SHOULD be alot cheaper than an air-source with me doing the expensive part, the loop field. But because of the 30% credit.....they were inflating the price by 30% and stealing my credit. I'm sure that line fools alot of people but as a man with the means to do it myself....I wasn't fooled.
For someone without the means of doing the loop field themselves, that is the big difference in cost. On a 4-ton like mine, I did 4 slinky loops @800' each. Which required a main trench about 80'....and 4 branches off of that at 120' each. So a total of 560' of trench, 6' depth, 3' wide. Roughly about the same amount of material excavated for my 1250 sq ft basement at 8' deep. And covering about a quarter acre.
But aside from that.....I know a lot of people that balk at a 20k geothermal system when building a new home.....then they spend $12k on air conditioning, $3k on a chimney, and $3k on a wood burner and talk about how much they saved because geo was too much $$$$
