> I'm aware of the difference between the colloquial use of the word 'heat-pump' and the technical one, on the off chance that you really did not understand me I meant the ones where you use an in-ground heat source or sink to cool or heat a building by the movement of a working fluid.
I really did not understand you, thanks for clarifying. I've heard of below-ground heat-pumps but have yet to see one in real life. A friend of mine who lives in a less temperate part of the US investigated it, but it was too long of a payback time due to the much increased installation costs.
Here in NL we heat homes typically by burning natural gas. The natural gas reserves are not nearly depleted but the reservoirs are collapsing causing earth quakes that damage houses built on/near the gas fields. This has led to a huge push for alternative ways to heat homes, and one of the few feasible ones for many reasons is heat pumps. So there are quite a few of them deployed and there is talk of subsidies or subsidized loans for people that want to install one.
The goal is to stop building new houses connected to the gas infrastructure soon.
My friend is not connected to the natural gas infrastructure (too remote), so it was going to be either electric or liquefied petroleum gas with an on-site tank that was periodically refilled.
On the time frame he was considering, a heat pump was chaper, the propane was more reliable (when the electricity goes out, it's often winter), and the below ground heat-pump was so expensive to install that it made no sense. Not sure what winters are like in NL, but average low where he is would be -8C in January with anything below about -15C being unusually cold.
I really did not understand you, thanks for clarifying. I've heard of below-ground heat-pumps but have yet to see one in real life. A friend of mine who lives in a less temperate part of the US investigated it, but it was too long of a payback time due to the much increased installation costs.