If you want to take advantage of all the benefits of the inexhaustible energy of the ground within your home, a few points are essential to know. Geothermal heating is an entirely ecological alternative for heating a detached house. This solution saves energy in the long term, but it is a relatively complex technique that requires certain measures to be taken before carrying out the project.
Before going into the details of using a geothermal heating system. It is important to know beforehand the true meaning of geothermal energy itself. It is a technology that makes it possible to exploit the calories that are found naturally in the earth, produced by the earth’s core. We speak of hydrothermal energy if we draw heat from a water table. A fireplace can use geothermal energy to heat the different rooms of the house. It all depends on the size of your outdoor space.
If you have a large garden, you can opt for a horizontal catchment. This alternative requires at least the same area as the home to be heated. A simple earthwork can sometimes be enough to supply the individual house with heating. Depending on the configuration of the land, the dimensions and the number of floors of the accommodation, a borehole of up to 1.20 meters deep may be essential to bury the probes or geothermal sensors.
Vertical geothermal heating
Admittedly more expensive than the horizontal solution, the vertical collection brings many more advantages. First, it only requires between 1 and 2 m² of surface. It is therefore perfect if you do not have a huge garden. But of course, it is necessary to carry out a deeper drilling which can go from 10 to 200 meters deep, even more in certain cases. It should be noted that the deeper you dig, the more heat you recover. It is for this reason in particular that vertical collectors offer better performance than horizontal ones.
Geothermal studies to be carried out before construction
Geothermal probes have two ends to be connected to the heat pump which is responsible for distributing the heat energy obtained in the house via transmitters. But even before starting earthworks or drilling, it is crucial to define your exact heating needs. Are you planning to heat the whole house or just a few rooms? Do you want to take advantage of geothermal energy throughout the year or a seasonal solution that will go hand in hand with auxiliary heating? It is also essential to determine if you want to have hot water and air conditioning thanks to geothermal energy.
In the case of a new construction, the Thermal Regulations 2012 or RT 2012 will ask you to answer each of these questions and will offer you different options to consider. If it is a renovation, you must have the ground and the air renewal, the period of occupation, the glazed surface and the insulation analyzed. This study, to be done with the help of a professional, will allow you to know if it is also necessary to carry out insulation work for better results.
Before starting the construction site, it is also of paramount importance to check the location of the thermal energy in the basement. It can be located in the ground or in the water of aquifers depending on the nature of your land. An expert will be able to define its specificities to assess its energy potential. Sedimentary basins, active structural zones and volcanic regions influence geothermal resource reconnaissance techniques. This intervention requires in-depth knowledge of geology and hydrogeology, geophysics and geochemistry. Depending on the case, reconnaissance drilling may be useful.
For more precision, the experts can advise you to carry out regional inventories. Such an operation makes it possible in particular to reinterpret the data collected during exploration campaigns and reconnaissance drilling or during geological or petroleum research. Thereafter, it is necessary to define the good adequacy of the thermal resource found with your energy needs.
The essentials on the use of individual geothermal energy
The exploitation of geothermal energy consists in recovering the heat of the ground with geothermal probes and restoring it in the individual dwelling. It is quite likely that this sustainable energy will become one of the most used heating systems in the future. It is a renewable energy with various advantages that you can use to heat an individual dwelling