[Strawbale] Drilled Well to Heat Greenhouse?

[Tim Chamberlain]

Speireag
   
With a heat source of 50F, without a heat pump, you don't have much of a 
temperature difference to push heat into your greenhouse. You're also 
going to impede heat flow using a loop of PEX in the well compared with 
pumping well water directly through the floor. I think you would be 
better off using a wood stove or active solar.

Tim


Speireag Alden wrote:
> Howdy, all.
>
>      To keep a (strawbale) greenhouse at workable
> temperatures in the winter where the water table is only
> twenty feet down:  what about drilling a short well and
> running a loop of PEX down into it, and then pumping water
> or coolant through it, and through loops in the floor of
> the greenhouse?  With ground water at 50 degrees
> Fahrenheit year-round, and a pump controlled by a
> thermostat, the only power cost would be to run the pump.
>
>      Cost would be about $1000 for the well, say $250 for
> the pump (less if it's not brass) and electricity as
> needed (which could be from a solar panel if the loops are
> running through substantial thermal mass).
>
>      What do you think?
>
> -Speireag.
>
>