Ground Source Heat Pumps

A few metres down the earth remains at a constant temperature about 10 – 15 degrees in the UK. We can make use of this fact to transfer this latent heat to your home using a ground source heat pump. Heat pumps draw heat from the ground via a ground collector (slinky) or a ground probe (bore hole).

Heat pumps work in much the same way as a fridge but in reverse. In a fridge the heat is transported from inside to outside, while a heat pump takes heat stored below the underground frost line and transports it via the heating system to the house interior. Some systems are designed to work in reverse as well, cooling the interior in hot weather.

Air source heat pumps use the same principle but extract the heat from the air, rather than the ground. As such their installation is much simpler and cheaper but the available heat is not constant.

These systems require power to drive them, but in an efficient system one kilowatt of energy can generate three kilowatts of heat.