We all want something for nothing. Everybody wants a free lunch, even though philosophers tell us there’s no such thing. However, occasionally we can get a cheap lunch, or at least the illusion of a cheap lunch. On the topic of heating and air conditioning, time and invention are bringing us closer to this cheap lunch. Northern Kentucky geothermal and Greater Cincinnati heating and air conditioning are striving constantly to bring this reality to the mid-West.

What constitutes a free lunch in relation to the heating and air conditioning system? It consists of transferring heat that already exists and moving it where it’s needed. This idea of using existing heat began when the heat pump was invented. It seems counter-intuitive that on a cold day, the house can be warmed by the cold outside. It becomes more understandable when you remember that there is no such thing as cold in physics. What we sense as cold isactually just a lower level of heat. Knowing this, we can have an image of how a heat pump can keep the house warm by bringing outdoor heat indoors. Looking at the reverse, it is just as counter-intuitive that the summer heat in the kitchen can be transferred outdoors into an even hotter summer afternoon. But, as we all know, it works.

The next evolutionary step is geothermal heating and cooling. While the heat pump transfers the heat of the air, the geothermal system works with the heat of the earth. When this type of system is set up for a house, lengths of metal tubing are buried in the ground, going in either a horizontal or vertical direction, depending on the layout of the house and the lot. It is even possible to anchor the loops of coil into the bottom of a pond. Heat from the ground can be transferred into the house. The way this works is that fluid circulates through these loops of tubing, pulling out the heat of the ground. When transferred to the geothermal unit, the unit compresses this heat to yield a high temperature that is blown into the house. When summer arrives, this transfer is reversed to cool the house.

Geothermal heating and cooling is most commonly used in the most obvious places, where the earth is the hottest. Where are these locations? Around the boundaries of the earth’s tectonic plates. The tectonic plates are the huge chunks of rock that make up the continents of the earth and that float on the underlying asthenosphere. Around the edges of the plates are the thermally active areas of the world where volcanoes and earthquakes occur. This intense heat is available for geothermal heating and cooling. Now that this system has evolved, it is applicable in more stable areas of the earth, including our mid-West.

It’s still true that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but the lunch is getting cheaper as heat pumps and geothermal heating and cooling are developed and become more widespread. As they evolve further and become more widely used, we can hope that they will become a more economical choice for our homes.

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