In 1978 my husband and I built a new home, first we started out with a gas furnace and central air conditioning. But we didn’t care for it because we would be warm when the furnace was on and after it shut down the house would cool off until it came back on again. Then we decided to add a wood stove to our living area to help keep the house warmer. Unfortunately we would get the house to warm and have to open the window even in the dead of winter. Plus that’s not counting the singed eyebrows we incurred when putting the wood in and how dirty it made the house. Our next step was to go with an air source heat pump with backup electric heat. Our biggest problem with this was that the Iowa winters can get very cold and the air source heat pump is marginal in this area. So we had times when the system would go to the emergency electric backup heat. So finally after a few years we took our last and final step, we decided to put geothermal in. I wish we had done this when we built, but geothermal wasn’t available. We now have a GeoComfort geothermal in our home that Kraus & Sons installed and it works great. The house is always at a constant temperature whether heating or cooling and during the winter it heated our home just fine. We do have emergency backup heat with the system, but we have never had to use it. Adam Kraus, owner of Kraus & Sons is very informed about geothermal systems and how to retro fit one into your home.
Linda R.