ASHRAE has updated a 17-year-old publication on ground-source heat pumps to include benchmarks and design strategies for modern engineers to configure the most efficient and cost effective systems.

The revised book called, Geothermal Heating and Cooling: Design of Ground-Source Heat Pump Systems (GSHP), written by Steve Kavanaugh, professor emeritus at the University of Alabama, shows how to avoid problems like inefficient pumping, high cost ground loop designs, inadequate outside air provisions, unnecessarily complex control schemes and other design errors.

“There is now fairly wide recognition of the benefits of GSHP systems, particularly on the part of building owners in the schools and office building sectors, where the technology has achieved its highest penetration rates,” said Kevin Rafferty, consulting engineer on the book. “However, there also is a widely held view that anything bearing the name ‘geothermal,’ ‘ground source’ or ‘earth energy’ will produce the desired high efficiency/low operating cost.

This belief has led to installing poorly designed systems that don’t meet building owners’ expectations. Now owners and architects can better evaluate potential engineering consultants using necessary information from seven revised chapters, including new sections on field study results, energy and demand characteristics and updated information to optimize GSHP system cost