We have done some things to reduce our carbon footprint. Our latest consideration is that our boiler is on its last legs. It's 23 years old, so I guess it's done a decent job. It's not totally broke yet, but it's corroded and cracked, and slowly leaking. Not replacing it runs the risk that our basement will flood when the cover plate gives way and the "refill" valve keeps the water flowing to fill the empty space.
The solution is to get a new boiler of course. It's not what we wanted to be spending our money on, but at least the new one will be more fuel efficient. Our furnace runs on heating oil. Given that we have this costly repair coming up anyway, it got me thinking about if we could get off heating oil or not.
Geothermal would be the way to do it. Geothermal energy is energy derived from the ground. Once you get down below about 6 feet, the ground is consistently around 50 degrees. Circulating air or water through the ground using a compressor, you can heat or cool the air/water then circulate it in your house as heat in winter, and air conditioning in summer. I don't claim to understand the technology beyond very simplistic concepts so check out this Renewable Energy VT link to learn more.
Unfortunately geothermal heat isn't a cost effective option for a house like mine. I would have to do a lot of renovating to install ducts to carry the heated/cooled air, or replace all my hot water baseboards with ones designed for geothermal hot water (which isn't as hot as ones that go with fossil fuel furnaces/boilers). Then since we are town water we would have to drill a well (where the energy transfer would be made to heat or cool our house), and we would still have to buy the heat pumps. Doing all this would cost $30,000. Even with 30% discount off that price through a federal tax credit (if they are still offered) it's more than twice what a new boiler would cost. Then again, I know some people who have an old house that already had a well and a forced hot air heating system. In their case all they had to do was get the heat pumps. Easy peasy.
If we ever build a new house, perhaps then I will get geothermal heating/cooling. When building new, geothermal can be just as cost effective as traditional systems. And in the long run, even more effective since there are no fuel costs, just electricity to run the pumps, which could be solar.
What could you do to reduce the fossil fuels used by your home?
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