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Comment by romusha | Hacker News Reader

Prolly gonna revert back to conventional apartment in, like, 3-5 years max

So they will invest probably hundreds of thousands of dollars into a tech that will make them use a lot less electricity for heating and cooling, only to stop using that technology 5 years later and pay for expensive energies? Or will they completely uninstall the heat pumps? The thing with this kind of investment is, it's cash heavy at the beginning and then lets you save a lot of money. It makes no sense to ditch the installed technology once it's working for you and saves you money.

I believe a government grant paid for the system. The article neglected to mention that. It’s conceivable that there may be other things that went unmentioned in the article.

>I believe a government grant paid for the system.

Is there a source for that? You build the rest of your conjecture on this unsourced claim...

I live down the street. Here’s what the developer’s website has to say:

> Lendlease acquired $4 million in support from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to build a geoexchange system at 1 Java Street.

[1]: https://www.lendlease.com/us/projects/1-java-street/

Omce it's working, that's the key

No reason that would be the case - this already very well proven technology internationally, just much less common in the US.

Why do you think that?

Probably because people will steal the heat pumps.

There are apartment buildings going up in NYC with one-pipe steam heat, steel pipes, and cast-iron radiators, because there is nothing outside the boiler room worth stealing.[1]

[1] https://heatinghelp.com/blog/nyc-one-pipe-steam/

The heat pumps are located where the boiler room would be ;-) so... they're about as easy to steal as a boiler. Size is also similar - not that easy to stuff into your pants and walk of whistling.

Nothing to steal here, except for the pump itself its all extremely deep underground.

Good luck stealing a district-heating ground loop. What would the average even do with a water/air or water/water heat pump sized for 800+ units?

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