Optimizing economic performances of foundation earth-to-air heat exchangers for low-technology residential air-conditioning
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• Economic performance analysis of foundation earth-to-air heat exchanger. • Modeling heating and cooling loads of a house integrated with a geothermal exchanger. • An estimated load reduction of about 700 kWh (4.3%) throughout the year. • Unviable economic performance estimated in Quebec (Canada) due to low energy fare. • 40% of the exchanged heat lost through coupling and short-circuiting. Despite its classification as a low-technology and nearly passive sustainable system, the use of earth-to-air heat exchangers in residential settings remains relatively uncommon, primarily due to the expenses associated with excavation. Nevertheless, positioning the heat exchanger around the building’s foundations during construction offers a potential solution to mitigate these costs. This study conducts an economic viability analysis for such a configuration, focusing on a typical single-family dwelling in Montréal, Canada. A sizing investigation revealed that ducts with relatively small diameters (approximately 20 cm), constructed from cost-effective materials, are optimal. These ducts should be placed as deep and as distant from the foundation as feasible. The optimal heat exchanger configuration reduces the building’s heating/cooling load by 701 kWh per year (4.3 %). However, despite minimal excavation expenses, the economic analysis suggests an unviable Levelized cost of Energy for the province of Quebec (0.182 US$.kWh −1 ) compared to the low electricity rates in the area (a domestic fare of 0.059 US$.kWh −1 ). The findings underscore notable losses attributable to thermal short-circuiting influenced by the basement walls and coupling affected by the mandatory Heat Recovery Ventilation system. Overall, it was determined that only 60 % of the sensible heat exchanged with the soil effectively contributes to load reduction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".