Waterfront homes tap into lakes for cheaper geothermal heating
CBC
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Heating and cooling your home with a ground-source heat pump is climate-friendly and very efficient. But it can require expensive digging or drilling. Waterfront home or cottage owners have a cheaper shortcut: pond or lake geothermal (or geoexchange) heating and cooling.
Earlier this year, when I answered questions from CBC readers about heat pumps, I received a note from John Wypich of Port Severn, Ont., who has heated his home with a lake geothermal system for 29 years.
"There are many cottages along lake shores that can make use of these simple sources of heat," Wypich said. "In my opinion, your article has missed an opportunity to inform people of this option."
Perhaps, but I can always write another article. So I called him up.
Wypich lives in a waterfront home on a peninsula that juts into a lake called Gloucester Pool — one of hundreds of lakes splashed across Ontario's Muskoka region. When he first moved in 50 years ago, his home was heated with oil. But when the oil tanks leaked, he started looking for alternatives.
The area didn't have natural gas access; some of his neighbours heated their homes with propane.
"But I wanted to have an environmentally friendly device," Wypich recalled.
His research turned up geothermal (or geoexchange) heating, which uses an electrically powered heat pump to move heat into a home in the winter and out in the summer.
Normally, heat is exchanged with the ground far below the surface, which has a relatively constant temperature throughout the year — even when air temperatures are very cold. That's why it's very efficient, and popular in places like Sweden.
However, digging or drilling to lay the underground heating loop (a closed loop of pipe or tubing containing the liquid that transfers the heat) can be expensive or impractical for many homeowners.
But waterfront properties have another option: the loop can simply be sunk to the bottom of a nearby lake or pond — no digging required — as long as it's deep enough so it won't freeze in winter.
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This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.