A heat pump moves heat-energy between a building and the earth. Moving heat energy is much more efficient that directly heating a building.

And because a heat pump uses only electricity, it cuts down on the use of carbon fuels, like oil, coal or gas.​​

Dig down about 8 feet and the earth is far warmer than the air in winter and far cooler than the air in summer. ​

In the winter, a “ground-source” heat pump allows us to take that earth warmth and use it as a leg up for heating our homes. In summer, we can take the heat from our homes and dump it into the cooler earth.​

You are already familiar with one kind of heat pump … the household air conditioner. Using electricity, it extracts heat from the air in our house and pumps this heat into the air outside. ​

And perhaps you’ve seen other new kinds of “air-source” heat pumps, attached to the outsides of houses with pipes running up to individual ducts in each room. Air-source heat pumps are getting popular. They get the homeowner away from carbon burning for heat in the winter.​

But the air is always less efficient as an energy swap medium than the ground. For the best results, ground-source heat pumps (sometimes called geothermal heat pumps) are really the way to go. Simply imagine replacing your basement furnace/central air system with an electric unit that attaches to pipes buried in your yard. Those pipes carry liquid that takes warmth from the earth in the winter and transfers heat to the earth in the summer.​

Starting in 2022, heat pumps were the most common heating systems in new homes. However, there is one big hurdle: those heat exchanging pipes are placed in large horizontal trenches or deep vertical wells. This can be expensive, messy, time-consuming and disruptive. So PipelinePilot invented a better way to put pipes in the ground, at the perfect depths and a fraction of the cost.​

Want to go deeper into heat pump technology, and survey the difference between traditional heating/cooling units, electric resistive coil heaters, air-source heat pumps and ground-source heat pumps? You’ll be impressed by the much greater efficiency and cleanliness of heat pumps, and, in particular, ground-source heat pumps.​

Ground source heat exchanger Types - Wikipedia 

Department of Energy: Geothermal Heat Pumps 

Benefits of Geothermal Heating and Cooling