Heat Transfer System?

[Geranium]

Hi,

We've just heard of a Heat Transfer System which apparently uses the heat in the earth to power the heating system. As this house is costing us a fortune before we've even moved in, I'm very keen to look into it further. I also hear the Queen is about to do the same so we are in good company!

Has anyone done this in France though? Is it commonly known about? Easy to find engineers? I also gather the Government will refund 60% of the cost - to a french tax payer. Now that sounds good.

[Nick Trollope]

It is called geothermal & it works like a fridge in reverse, using pipes buried in your garden. Although I have never seen a CH system using it, but a friend has a hot-water heater. Cost about 2000E installed & uses 380Watts of electricity to produce (an effective) 2Kw of water heating.

As for grants, the rumour mill has them available. However, the French government has no money, so actually receiving one may be a different matter.

 

[Gyn_Paul]

There is a long thread called Geothermal Heating. It's worth ploughing through it. it's currently on page 7 of 62 (bottom left on the page of threads in house renovation) but don't forget since it numbers from the most recent, as more threads are started it will move down the pile and become page 8 of 63, then 9 of 64 etc. There may be a way of jumping to a page, but 've never found it.

As for the grants, I understood it to be a tax rebate. Which rather limits it to those of us who pay pax!

paul

[Liz]

"Has anyone done this in France though? Is it commonly known about? Easy to find engineers? "

It is well known and is becoming more so.  Our neighbour had it installed in a new build about 5 years ago.  It provides under floor heating and he is very pleased with it.  I believe it is one of those systems that costs a lot to intall but is then cheap to run.  A search in www.pagesjaunes.fr for Geothermie should find you engineers in your area.

Liz (29)

[Lilly]

We are having geothermie installed soon, there are some makes better than others so do your research also as regards rebates it works like this, in this area you get up to 50% rebate on the actual machine and capture not on the water boiler or any thing that could be used by a different system ie: underfloor heating so it is not quite the discount that it would first appear also as long as you have registered for tax it is either a rebate off tax owed or a cheque if you do not need to pay tax due to no tax payable.

We are doing all the manual labour of fitting pipes and radiators and underfloor systems and leaving the capture and connections to the experts to help keep the initial costs down but it is still an expensive operation it works out about the same as a fuel system after the rebates!! Still hopefully cheaper to run!!

[Geranium]

These are great replies. Thank you so much. We are at early stages and just learning about how it all works, but this has given us some great information.