We have a newly 5000 sq ft home built that we've moved into September. Our electric bill current month is around $400. Our power usage was 2,607KWH. What would be a normal electrical cost for a Geo home? We have a 6ton CLimateMaster Tranquility 27 in the basement and 3 ton on the upper floor. Im not 100% sure what type of looping it has. All I know is they dug a 6-7feet hole in our yard and layed pipe stretching to the very far back of our property. Im guessing 300 feet in distance back and forth several times. Our previous home was 3700 sq ft with HE Furance and our electrical bill was roughly 280$ i was hoping there would be savings. i just want to be sure the system is operating as it should be. i had my installer here a couple days ago and he checked the temp in and out and it was 4-5 degrees difference. thanks!

Sounds good to me. 4-5 degrees in 1st stage means the water side of the heat pump is operating correctly. In order to determine the health of your loop, you really need to know what the entering water temp is. In the northeast a normal EWT for a horizontal loop would be between 30 and 40 degrees. If $400 is your total elec. bill @ .15 per KWH ,I would say your system is performing well. Where are you located?

Out of curiosity, what fuel did your high efficiency furnace use? Did the $280 electric bill include this fuel?

I live in a 1950 sq ft home and when I used oil at 84% efficiency I spent well over $400 per month just in oil in NY. Sounds like $400 per month to heat and run all electricity to a 5000 sq ft house is quite a bargain if you are in a colder climate. Now, if you are in a warmer climate, it's a different story.

I have a smaller house (2100 sq feet, older home 1959 1 1/2 story cape) (4 ton unit, vertical loop)
Based on my computations, if I'd had oil heat, it would have cost $527 to heat the home last month.
But with the Geothermal, the elec bill went up only $126 over previous bills when I didn't have geothermal.
See calculations below. Any questions, feel free to private message me here or at: stuart.wyss gmail.com

Heating degree days covered by the electric bill: 1044 (according to degreedays.net)
Gallons of oil needed (if I still had oil) : 176 (degree days x home oil coefficient)
Current cost of oil x gallons needed/used = 2.98 x 176 = $527 worth of oil to heat the home last month
Electric bill was $231 this month, minus $105 (base cost of house usage with no heating/cooling) = $126 to heat using geothermal
Comparison vs. oil = $401 saved vs oil heat.

Thanks for all the replies!

I believe temp coming in was around 31-32 and  temp coming out was around 26-28.

Im located in Caledon, Ontario, Canada.

Temperature is about -3 to -15 outside.   It changes rapidly.

I also ask this question because every time I look at the tstat the system is running almost all the time.  is this normal?     I made some changes to the settings because it was running stage 1 for about 5 minutes and changing to stage 2 quite rapidly.

Im using a climatemaster tstat.    I made changes to the heat stage recovery time.  default was 30 minutes i set it to max and now stage 1 is running much longer and our indoor temperature is still satisfactory.

but im having big trouble keeping humidity up.   Also I asked the question about if it was running properly because humidity is hard to keep up also.   I was worried our home wasn't sealed tight and thus resulted in the system running most of the time.

im using an april aire 700a (humidifier) on the main floor 6ton unit. no humidifier upstairs.

my $400 per month is a guestimate.    Im guessing itll be around 500-600 or more to power the entire house and thats not including gas bills which are around 80-150.  

my old home had a Trane HE furnace running gas.   and regarding if $280 was to heat the home.  I guess I forgot our furance was gas.  Our gas was around $100 and electrical $280 for all electrical.

How can I tell if our AUX HEAT is coming on frequently?  our installer left the tstats at default settings.  is this good?  what would you recommend to change for optimal efficiency? 

Also would it be a good idea to change our gas water tank to tankless?    I know the geo heats the water up to a certain temp and then gas brings it up the rest of the way.  what if we install a tankless after the geo water?  would this make this more efficient?

thanks alot.

sounds like you have a great performing system....$400 a month for this size house and up in ontario is great, you should not pay more than $1200-$1500 a year. Most efficient design is a water buffer tan, and then use any other heat source to condition your tank to the final temp. Of course, most efficient way would be to use geo on demand.....

Not pay more then $1200 to $1500 a year on heating our home? Or did you mean $12000 to $15000 :P If we pay $400 to 600 per month thats around 5-6k yearly. Well this includes eerything including lights etc.ec. What your saying is $100 is usually cost to heat our home and the rest goes to other utilities? alittle confused.

All right...if you look at the heating degree daysthe vast majority of the use is in mid December through mid February, 2 months at $400, then there are the shoulder months (Mid Oct-mid Dec and mid Feb to Mid april at about $100 a month, which totals to about $1200. Add another $100 to $200 for the rest of the year, you end up between $1200-$1500. You are not paying what you are paying in January all year around...Hope this helps.

Ohh yes. i didnt think about hotter months. during summer is any electricity used to bring the colder temps like AUX HEAT? or is it strictly ground? is there any way to tell how often AUX HEAT comes on? what would you recommend be optimal settings so use in our climatemaster tstat?

velcomrob do you have a HRV or air to air heat exchanger of some sort? We had issue last year (first winter in our new house) with it being really dry and I turned the HRV down to low speed and solved the problems. It brings in so much dry air I think it was drying everything out.

Brock, It seems like we have the same low humidity problem in our house. I am not sure if we have air to air heat exchanger. Can I turned down that to a lower speed? where do I find that? Excuse my ignorance. It causes us static electricity, dry skin and itching and chapping,mucous membranes in nose and throat dry out during this winter. Thanks.

Just ask my installer that we have water to air heat exchanger.

Hi We do not have a hrv or anything of that sort. That's why I'm doing an enery audit I'm worried we have leaks everywhere losing humidity that our humidifer provides. Well as far as I can ttell there is no hrv unless its hidden in the attic. If not then we don't have it Is it a good idea to have one installed

It usually shows on the thermostat that the aux heat is on. Strictly ground in the summer. Alternatively you can invest in an energy monitoring system. I recommend the WEL www.welserver.com

what do they go for those energy monitoring systems? I will defintely get one installed. my assumption was alittle off on the monthly bill. Its actually between $550 and $700. I got a catch up bill from our local hydro. We use around 5800Kw per month during winter. Don't know about summer yet. Hopefully its alot less. Is a good portion of the bill related to heating? We dont keep alot of things on. Im curious if major portion is the heating of our home. im looking into going to solar power also.

Is there a way to figure out what the normal monthly cost would be to heat our home using the existing Geo we have? to see if our monthly costs are inline. thats what im trying to figure out at this point. i want to see overall how much my usage will be roughly and then figure out if I want to go solar or not as well.

 The welserver kit is about $575, you also need 3 on/off switches which are $25 each for the 1st stage, second stage and aux heat.

I suggest you wait a year and see how your actual bills are compared to last year. You can fairly well predict it with the heatloss calculation and the weather data.

Ya maybe thats what i will do.

Right now im watching my meter outside everyday to see what sort of Kw im using.

But I guess summer will be completely different.

thanks alot!

Where do you connect the circuit switches for each stage? I have a WEL now and installed a single circuit switch to tell me when the HP is on so I can calculate cost. But I over looked the issue of multiple stages so my calculations are off.

John

http://welserver.com/WEL0167/

Good question. Phil has 1-Wire Combo Module for the thermostat input, which would be the most elegant solution. I got the 3 switches but only have one in yet. I think aux heat is pretty straight forward to find a wire, but I must admit that I need to look into a way to activate the second stage circuit switch. I believe you need a minimum of 600mA to activate the switch. I'll let you know...