For our new home, we have decided that we really want to get geothermal heating and cooling installed. For those who don't know, geothermal heating and cooling works by exchanging the temperature stored in the ground (about 5-6 feet deep) with the temperature in your house. Since the ground temperature at this level stays fairly constant year-round, the warmth of the Earth can be used to heat your home in the winter and the coolness can be used to cool your house in the summer.

They operate by pumping fluid through coiled tubing which is buried in trenches in your yard. With our 9 Acres to build on, we should have plenty of space for the trenches. Therefore, you will only be using a small amount of electricity to run the pump and a fan to blow the heat through the duct work. This can be a major savings. However, the startup costs are greater with a geothermal system in Iowa coming in around $8,000-15,000 depending on several factors.

For us, it's not only about saving money on our utility bills and the fact that we won't need to have an LP tank, but we like this opportunity to help be a little "greener".

For some more information about geothermal heating and cooling see:
Wikipedia Article