Geothermal ground heat pump

buffetr13

Hi, I have an offer on a house which is heated via a geothermal ground heat pump.

All i know from viewing the house is:

It's a story and a half type dwelling.

The auctioneer told me that the sellers heating bill amounts to 700 euro per year( can you trust an auctioneer)

The heat pump is located in the utility room. Access to the ufh is in a storage room.

Concrete build,with insulating Board to external walls( I don't know to what thickness) I assume it's a 100mm cavity with full or partial fill.

300mm rock wool in the attic.

The fireplace in the sitting room has never been used.

Ufh upstairs and downstairs with a combination of solid wood flooring and ceramic and marble tiles.

The house build is relatively new, about 4 years.

I suppose what I'm looking for is some advice from somebody in the know, about what questions I should ask the seller and what should I look into.

And, are heat pumps bad news or is it just a combination of factors that can make them ineffective i.e poor insulation, no draft proofing and shoddy installation.

Thanks

Condenser

buffetr13 wrote: »

Hi, I have an offer on a house which is heated via a geothermal ground heat pump.

All i know from viewing the house is:

It's a story and a half type dwelling.

The auctioneer told me that the sellers heating bill amounts to 700 euro per year( can you trust an auctioneer)

The heat pump is located in the utility room. Access to the ufh is in a storage room.

Concrete build,with insulating Board to external walls( I don't know to what thickness) I assume it's a 100mm cavity with full or partial fill.

300mm rock wool in the attic.

The fireplace in the sitting room has never been used.

Ufh upstairs and downstairs with a combination of solid wood flooring and ceramic and marble tiles.

The house build is relatively new, about 4 years.

I suppose what I'm looking for is some advice from somebody in the know, about what questions I should ask the seller and what should I look into.

And, are heat pumps bad news or is it just a combination of factors that can make them ineffective i.e poor insulation, no draft proofing and shoddy installation.

Thanks

All problems with heat pumps are down to the issues you listed above especially poor installation and poor application i.e heat pumps and rads instead of underfloor.
Theres not alot you can ask the buyer besides requesting his bills to see what they look like. Any indication of efficiency would require checking a few parameters which only an experienced engineer would be able to obtain and give you a guide as to the efficiency of the unit. They should also know by how its set up.

TPM

Have a look at the ESB meter, take the total reading divide it by the number of years the number of years the house has being lived in, this will give you a good idea of the running costs of the house, and a good guess at the cost of running the heat pump, assuming it was actually used!!
Some heat pumps have meters have meters attached or built in that might help too.

There is no way of anyone that wasnt living in the house really knowing the running costs there are too many variables that can affect the running costs, like the length and layout of the piperuns in the floor ant this cant really be checked.

The problem with heatpumps is they are generally at extremes, very efficient if everything is right but horrendously expensive if things are not right

Duggys Housemate

If heat pumps don't work in practice it isn't because they can't work in theory. It's down to the implementation. They should be far more efficient than any other power source.