Untapped and Free Renewable Energy Just Under Our Feet

    The most expensive parts of our cost of living is our mortgage, food/health and our utility bill all monthly drains on our income.  In  a recent Ezine article ‘Is a risk free investment a fantasy’ I showed how to make your house a true investment and how to get rid of a mortgage quickly and increase your net worth dramatically in 7 to 12 years.  

      Now I am going to show you how to use energy that is just under your feet to decrease your heating and cooling bill.  This energy is free for your use and renewable.  The biggest reason I can think of that you may have not heard of it is that other methods worked just fine until our present concerns of the cost of oil, the environment and global warming and our national concern for how we are sending billions of dollars overseas to our enemies who control the oil and thus potentially our county’s future and security. 

       Understanding how to get to this energy is our next challenge.  Many parts of the country have already embraced this technology because of the lack of availability of fuel.    The cost of putting in a new system should not be a concern because there is approximately a 6 to 8 year return on your investment and this could be even less depending on the rising cost of fuel. 

     The temperature of the earth 6 feet down is 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit all year long and consistently almost anywhere in the world.  The concept for most non-technical people is the understanding the difference between temperature and heat energy and how heat pumps are able to transfer heat energy from one place to another and that the accumulation of the heat energy will produce a desired temperature.

      In the traditional furnace heater a high percent of the heat produced goes out the chimney along with CO2 and air pollution.  In a heat pump no fuel is burned so there are no emissions into the atmosphere and the heat pump produces as much heat as required. Because of how this system is designed the heat pump can be installed inside the home and because the heat pump is not exposed to the extremes of winter and summer the heat pump will last a lot longer.

      The Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) is not the only answer to solving the energy crisis but this geothermal energy is usually not thought of as a viable solution.  Other solutions are solar photovoltaic power, solar hot water, and wind power.  The equipment is not free but by combining the installation of any of the above with a risk free investment strategy the cost of the systems will be a lot less by decreasing the cost of borrowing other people’s money. Suprisingly the GSHP has the best return on your investment of all the above except may be windpower.     

      Another concern is how we build our homes.  If we would design our homes to be efficient users of energy the cost of heating and cooling a home would go way down.  In the future our homes could be designed to have a zero carbon foot print and require no outside utilities to heat, cool and power a home.  In the future we may consider living in earth sheltered homes that will take full use of the energy under our feet.