Joseph Pabst is an urban pioneer. Long before the Obama administration began contemplating the equivalent of a gas-guzzler tax for homes in summer 2009, Pabst was having 10 wells dug in his yard to create a geothermal system. The wells capture the earth’s energy to heat and cool his 1929 Georgian Colonial on Milwaukee’s East Side.
“The yard looked like a pigsty for a while,” Pabst says, “but it was worth it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Pabst’s utility bills once topped $1,000 a month, but four years after his geothermal system was installed, his energy costs are a half to a third of that. The geothermal system cools his home, heats his pool in summer, maintains his home’s temperature and gives him “gloriously heated bathroom floors in winter,” Pabst says.
“The drawback with geothermal is that you can achieve the desired temperature, say 70 degrees, but you have to wait two to three hours,” he says. Not a patient man, Pabst had his contractor, Gross Heating, also install traditional boilers to raise his home’s temperature in a matter of minutes. Then the geothermal system takes over. “If I was willing to be cold for a little while, I’d save even more,” Pabst says.
Invented in Switzerland, geothermal technology has been around since 1912, but it’s suddenly chic. “It’s the next forefront in the energy-saving field,” says Scott Droegkamp, part owner of Dave Droegkamp Heating in Hartland. Since the company added a geothermal division 2 1/2 years ago, it has installed more than 60 units. Higher energy prices have driven this trend, Droegkamp says.
Geothermal energy works somewhat like a refrigerator. The system involves burying plastic pipes that will be filled with fluid (usually an antifreeze solution), which circulates and absorbs the temperature of the earth (in Wisconsin, it’s about 54 degrees year-round). In winter, the fluid collects the earth’s heat and transfers it into the home, working as a heat exchanger to increase the temperature. In summer, the system reverses by carrying heat out of the home, leaving only the cool air behind.
For an older home with a smaller yard, the pipes can be buried vertically, as they were in Pabst’s case. On a larger lot, the pipes are installed horizontally, a less
expensive technique. Still, geothermal units aren’t cheap. They can cost up to twice as much as a standard heating and cooling system, says Dan Firkus, Droegkamp’s hydronic and geothermal supervisor.
On new buildings, geothermal units are being combined with solar panels to generate as much – or more – energy than a house will use.
Mark Neumann, co-owner of Neumann Developments in Waukesha (and a Republican gubernatorial contender), recently built one such home in the Autumn Ridge subdivision in Ixonia, site of the Metropolitan Builders Association’s Parade of Homes from Aug. 22 to Sept. 13. The Neumann home – which sold for $350,000 – generates enough energy to meet all of its needs, plus power a Chevy Volt for a 20-mile commute to work, with enough energy left over to sell to the local utility.
So why isn’t everyone doing it? The up-front costs can be a hurdle. The Neumann house’s extra insulation, solar photovoltaic system, geothermal unit and a system to monitor the home’s energy use added roughly $70,000 to the home’s cost.
For Tom and Verona Chambers, who built a new, zero-energy home in Black River Falls, the extras totaled $89,000. A grant from WPPI Energy, along with federal tax credits and other incentives, covered all but $23,000 of the Chambers’ added costs, and after four months, they show a $100 credit on their electric bill. The tricky part was getting a mortgage. Banks balked at the higher-than-average price for the 1,800-square-foot home, and appraisers couldn’t find suitable comps.
In the end, the Chambers family had to take out a mortgage on another property they owned to cover the added expense. “Even now, if we were to appraise the house and try to sell it, we probably would never get what we have put into it,” says Tom. By contrast, Neumann says he doesn’t expect such problems because the appraisal for his Autumn Ridge home went smoothly.
The added cost of a geothermal heating and cooling system is recouped in five to nine years, says Firkus. If energy prices soar, the payback would be sooner. The environmental impact is also significant, adds Firkus, who equates a geothermal system with planting 1 acre of trees or taking two cars off the road. That’s real green power.
