I am at the very beginning stages of building a home and am researching different types of home heating options.  We have already ruled out oil due to the price and natural gas hook-ups aren't available.  We're considering geothermal heating as well as liquid propane but not knowing either really well I could use some guidance.  Our home will be approximatly 3,400 square feet and pretty well insulated.  My questions are:

1) What is involved with getting a geothermal heating system setup?
2) What are the upfront costs?
3) Average cost to use geothermal
4) Any recommendations on brands we should look into
5) Any other pros / cons between the two

I know this is pretty open-ended...we really do need guidance!

Thanks in advance!

Your questions are so general that we could give only very general answers, most of which have been given before here. What you should do is surf prior threads here to learn more and then return with questions specific to your house, lot, climate, energy costs, etc.

A place to start is looking at energy costs, if you haven’t already, so you know how long it will take to "payback" the difference in the systems.  I think so often people don't factor in the rising cost of fuel.  If energy prices double the "payback" is 1/2 the time.

 

But put your numbers in here and see what you come up with.

calculator

For us it spits out $476 for electric (geothermal running on time of use), $972 (geothermal running regular electric rates), $1552 for natural gas and $3785 for propane.

 

For us when we got bid we had three in the $16k to $20k range for conventional HVAC and $38k for geothermal with conventional furnace gas backup.

Brock beat me to it . dont be fooled by the eff% offered by propane its a high percent 95% about but the btu per gal if I remember correctly is 70-90k per gal. while oil is 140k per gal. dont get me wrong I hate oil more than anything but propane is less eff. btu/gal. times cost . There are many types of geothermal my research and limited experiance has lead me to direct exchange based on cost eff noise maint . direct exchange systems lead the pack

1) What is involved with getting a geothermal heating system setup? 
      Depends on the type of system, but the cheapest setup involves
      A) Access to water, lots of it. Generally either a well or large pond. And forget city water, the amount of water required would give you $300 a month water bill. 
      B) A geothermal system to extract the heat or cold from the water and transfer it to air from the house running thru the system. 
      C) Duct work to distrubute the air throughout the house. Duct work for Geothermal systems tend to be larger, so even if you already have duct work with your propane system, it may need to be enlarged/modified. 

 2) What are the upfront costs?
      Again considering this is an open loop system, you need to have a well drilled for you, you'll proably need a return well, a Pump to pump the water, a geothermal unit and duct work. How big of a system you will need will have a direct effect on the cost, but figure anywhere from 10k to 20k.

3) Average cost ot use geothermal?
   The cost of electricity to run the pump, compressor and blower, anywhere from $50 to $200 depending on the size of the system. Generally speaking a geothermal system has an effiecency of 300% to 500%, so what roughly speaking it will be 1/3 to 1/5 the cost of running your existing system. 

4) Any Recommends on brands we should look into?
I'm not qualified to give an opinon on any brands as of yet. 

5) Any other Pros / Cons between the two?
 The two of what? A propane sytem and Geothermal? Well propane is pretty much the least efficent system you can own, the next best system would be a Air source heat pump, Oil/Gas, open loop Geothermal, closed loop geothemal and Direct Exchange Geothemal. Each one more expensive then the next to install.

Some would argue that Closed loop and Direct Exchange (DX) are the same price, but in reality its a newer system, so less installers. With the price of gas, you can't tell me the guy who lives down the block from the installer is going to get the same kind of price as a customer 200 miles away, the gas and travel time alone is going to add a considerate amount to any estimate.  

The Cons? The upfront costs can be considerable, the lack of experienced contractors makes it difficult to get a qualified installer, the shortage of installers tends to make for higher then normal prices because you have less choices of contractors avaliable to you. 

Pros? Cost of operation is very low, and with the ever rising costs of Propane, Natual Gas and Oil, it looks more attractive every year. The system will pay for itself, in some cases as little as 5 years, in others within 15 years. Some of the fixed costs for installation are never repeated, What I mean by this, if you have a well drilled for the original system and the duct work done, you'll never have pay from these costs again, when you have to replace the worn out system in 15 to 20 years. The the payoff for a replacement system will be a lot quicker.  Geothermal can heat and cool, so no noisy air conditioner outside. 




  

Well said, TG