Geothermal power, suitable for Shetland?

[Medziotojas]

Wouldn't that be likely to affect the run of sea trout? And what would be the effect on other wildlife in the area?

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing off any possible measures that may benefit the community; just pointing out some potential pitfalls.

[paulb]

im sure they could build a trout run

[Para Handy]

"you get a borehole dug instead"

Why would you want Gordon Brown put in your garden

[ArabiaTerra]

I always thought this would have been a good idea for the district heating scheme for pre-heating the water before it enters the boiler. If you could get 10 degrees of heat from the sea, that's 10 degrees that doesn't have to come from the furnace.

[MaxFusion]

^True, think you'd get more heat with a borehole tho....

 

apparently it's 1KW for every 16m depth with a borehole

project I looked at was 500m deep boreholes

 

link

http://www.sldtonline.com/content/view/559/1/

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

You can produce electricity from geothermal as well as heat, a working system has existed for sometime in Southampton in the UK for example.

 

I imagine an Island wide scheme wouldn't be out of the picture, you'd need roughly a dozen such plants/holes to provide enough electric for everyone, and plenty of spare heat left over for industry to use. (Which from my understanding is you can also use it to cool as well.)

[mat49]

You can also get air source heat pumps, which you can fix to the side of your house. they can extract heat from air temperatures of minus 15. I havent seen any yet. I recently visited a factory/office refurb that installed boreholes for ground source heat pumps, which i will have to investigate further.

I read about a housing association in england installing boreholes which went down 80m, I suppose the depth depends on the geology.

[Njugle]

You can also get air source heat pumps, which you can fix to the side of your house. they can extract heat from air temperatures of minus 15. I havent seen any yet.

 

I have; efficient & cheap to run vs moderate noise emission and reliant on moving air and ducting.

 

A personal choice thing, if you like moving-air heating then you'd probably like it. Don't get me wrong, it's not like a hairdryer, quite subtle really.

 

But I suppose that is not the subject of this thread, so I'll rap my own knuckles and desist from mentioning it further.

[paulb]

do they work as well as they claim

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

I hear there can be issues with them icing up, though I've not investigated it much to find out the root cause.

 

My own limited experience with AC units does show the cheap Chinese ones are so badly designed they can end up leaking all over the place! (Unlike the German models no longer available which work flawlessly..)

 

 

I'm quite keen on air heating on the basis that it avoids having heating pipes/radiators running around just waiting to leak one day!

 

But I do hear it can be hard to control the humidity correctly. (Too low and plastics dry out!)

[mat49]

went to a house today and they had air to air units fitted in 2002 or 2005 costing approx £4500, 3 A/C units with 4 air blowers inside the house. The owner is very impressed with them he reckons they are 300% efficient and uses economy 7 during the winter nights. he didnt mention any down side to them. they are japanese makes.

I have read that air to water units are better and are used in under floor heating.

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

I wonder if you can get underfloor heating which uses hot air ? (Like the Romans did..)

 

I've spoken to a lot of people who have had water underfloor heating fail after 20 years, so don't want to go that route myself!

 

(The best I've seen to deal with building plumbing flooding issues is a place I once saw which had drainways built under all the plumbing runs, slow gentle slopes on the basis that it would leak at some point and they didn't want their building ruined or its contents!)

[brunalf]

yes jim cumming fae da burra garage does the bore holes or under ground matrix pipe work for the geothermal heating,this can be either under floor heating or radiators,not sure about generateing electricity from that though,where there's a will there's a way though.

you would need to speak to him to get all the spec',i'm sure he'll be very happy to give you the info.

i know he's done this kind of thing in lots of houses now so there's plenty of people around to ask if it's worth while.

i think it is and if i ever get a new house i'll get it,not sure about the under floor side of things though,i heard a story of a shop keeper who was selling flooring but his system sprung a leak and he had to rip up his whole floor to find the leak,cost him thousands.radiators fur me i doot.

[MaxFusion]

altho similar there's a big difference between geothermal and ground source heating Brunalf

[brunalf]

^^^^^^^^^

ya ta fur dat,a'm no fairly shoor whit da diffrence is except mibee depth?

but i do ken jim does bore holes too,you wid need tae ax him how deep he goes but it's a lot deeper dan whit i wid caa ground,namley intae da geology.dat's whit i thought da geo comes fae in geo thermal.sorry fur leading you aff da path,but he might be worth a shout onyway.