Call in a few estimates from local installers, couple this with the advice from the above posting and you will find what the parts could cost you and how much someone would charge you to install them; bearing in mind that their charge covers overhead and profits for their business as well as warranty, first years winterization, all of the various tools, and most importantly their expertise; provided you dont hire one of the many morons out there installing...

Here you go: After all rebates (there were several) & tax credit, my geothermal system ended up costing about $13,500. It looks like I'm going to be saving about 6000 kWh per year. When using an air source heat pump, I averaged about 27.5k kWh per year, and using the geothermal heat pump I'm averaging about 21.5k. Keep in mind that I don't even have a complete year of geothermal data, but I'm basing my estimates on what I have. Based on the numbers above and an electric rate of $0.11 per kWh, I'm saving $660/yr compared to my previous system. The ROI on that is about 20.5 years. So, if you have a working system and you're considering switching over to geo, based on my #s I'd strongly recommend against it as a 20+ year ROI is horrible. The reason I went with geo was that my old system died and needed replacement. I received several estimates for an air source heat pump, and they were around $9000. For me, it was a choice between a geo system for $13500, and an air source for $9000. I can't do much of an estimate comparing these two since I have no idea what sort of performance I'd be getting with a new air source heat pump. A huge plus for the geo system for me was that my geo system came with a 10 year parts and labor warranty. No one came even close for the air source heat pumps. Its also really neat that I don't have a loud evaporator in my back yard, but the value of that is very subjective.

Reading this thread has reaffirmed my decision to upsize the Greenspeed per Carrier's recommendation based on my cooling load. I could have went either way: 3 or 4-ton with my heat load. Too bad they don't make a 3.5 ton, it would have been the perfect size. Last year's polar vortex in NY Long Island really pushed me into the 4-ton. The way I figure the unit will only go into defrost mode below 8-10F. I also have 300sqft of window space, three huge doors and a fireplace. No matter how much my thermal envelope is tightened there will still be leakage in this 75 year-old home. My biggest disappointment so far with the 4-ton is it only reduces its speed to 50% vs 40% for the 3 and 5-ton units. The information across the Internet is just plain wrong on that one. We're charting in brand new territory still, so hope I've added somewhat to the pool of information. Otherwise this unit is *way* better than my wildest expectations. The comfortability factor is way better than my single-stage and well worth the additional cost. I'd go even as far as to say perfect. We had a huge heat snap for two days 65% humidity and temps into the upper eighties still at 80F past midnight. I only used $3.15 for the entire day vs. almost $11 for a similar temp period last year. I also credit my new Sunrise windows with lots of the improvement. At full load the system was using approximately 1150W. It only went up to 70% usage for a very brief period at night. More importantly I could easily maintain rock solid 45% humidity at 73F. Not enough data to really extrapolate much else. The system is so quiet my neighbors asked why I hadnâÂÂt turned it on yet. :) The real test will be this winter though. I'll probably create a new thread to chronicle some of my observations. This post was edited by bsmith on Mon, Jun 2, 14 at 2:42

We actually did try to get the MI on Loan A reduced, and the best they were able to lower it is about $10 (not enough to make a difference, given that the MI on Loan B is over $100 less per month). I understand that, broadly speaking, MI and the loan interest rate are inversely related, since the higher the MI the more risk the MI company is taking, thereby allowing the lender to lower the interest rate a bit. We're hoping that Loan B (with the higher rate and lower MI) might be able to drop their rate 1/8 or 1/4 point while keeping the same MI, as that would be the best of all worlds. Not sure that'll happen, though!