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Originally Posted by DDogg
...heating is not too much of a concern in Central Texas, except for a couple of months of the year and then many times only for a day or two here and there. My A/C has been running all day and it is October....
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So your major power usage is for AC? Sounds like maybe you could present this to the wife as a means of getting PC heat outside in some way that might be cheaper than paying for AC to pump it out. She might
totally approve.
FWIW, there are heat pumps designed specifically to work with water pumped up from a well (so geothermal heating/cooling). I looked into these for the last house I built. For someone in the northeast, they
almost make sense (slightly better on energy, but higher equipment costs to buy/maintain) but I'm a
lot north of you. Your wife might get
very interested in the energy/money/ecology part of this - and at which point you're spending your valuable free time building a "pilot project").
Oh, and BTW, the Romans used to cool buildings using geothermal - they'd put long clay pipes underground, leading into the building (source of cooler air) and a cupola-like-thing on the roof, which heated up and drew air through via thermosyphon. Of course, we both live in harsher climates than the Romans did...