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Comment by Y-bar | Hacker News Reader

I paid about EUR 4500 for a 114 meter drill hole including installation of brine (ethanol in my case actually) and removal of spoils. My 8kW heat+water pump was about EUR 7000.

I can spec out a gas burner for about EUR 4000 and a central AC for EUR 5000, but I bet the efficiency of the ground source heater would quickly trump the cost of buying gas regularly.

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That's insanely cheap compared to what we can get around here. Most installs I've heard of from people in the US are in the $20-50,000 range, depending on the size of their home and number of wells needed.

Yet it did not feel very cheap to me. The price of the pump had increased from 4800 only a year earlier due to the war in Ukraine.

There were a number of steps I had to go through. First I had to file for permission at the County Office, where they verify that drilling in the area is acceptable and that the intended pump follows regulations with respect to cooling media, and that the drilling company was certified to drill for my needs. It did cost about 70 euros.

I needed effective zero plumbing work in the house as it was already prepared to accept heating from a pump like that. Perhaps that is one of the major costs in USA?

I don’t know what’s going on with this kind of stuff in the US - similarly I’ve heard stories of people getting quotes in the States for anything from US$10-15K for the kind of air source mini-split heat pumps you can have supplied and installed for US $1200-2000 in Australia! (That is ~3.5 to 7 kW range - super common and cheap as chips here).

Can't prove it, but it seems vendors collude in (very hot) Arizona on all sorts of necessities (plumbing, A/C, electricians). they all seem to know what each charges, and the prices seem not kept in check by any real competition.

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