Long ownership horizons, steady load, and often simultaneous heating and cooling. This is the profile ground source was built for, and where the federal credit lands hardest.
A school board, a municipality or a care operator is still going to own the building in twenty-five years. That single fact changes which investments make sense, and it is the reason geothermal keeps appearing in public-sector projects while private commercial developers walk past it.
Add a predictable occupancy pattern, a plant room that already exists, and grounds with room for a rig, and the objections that kill residential projects mostly disappear.
A building with a cold core and a warm perimeter — or a hotel, a hospital, a data-adjacent facility, a mixed-use block — is heating and cooling at the same time, all year.
On a common loop, the heat rejected by the zones that are cooling is the heat delivered to the zones that are heating. The ground only handles the difference. That is work no air-source system can do at all, and it is where the efficiency numbers stop being incremental.
| Stage | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Feasibility | Load and annual balance modelling, site and access review, indicative cost and net cost after the federal credit |
| Thermal conductivity test | Instrumented test bore, so the field is sized on measured ground properties |
| Loop design | Bore count, depth, spacing and header layout to CSA/ANSI/IGSHPA C448 |
| Mechanical design | Heat pump selection and distribution, coordinated with the existing plant where there is one |
| Installation | Drilling, loop, header, mechanical and controls, under one contract |
| Commissioning | Flow balancing, controls verification, and the documentation the credit requires |
The 30% Clean Technology ITC requires a taxable Canadian corporation. Public and non-profit bodies cannot claim it.
That is a hard constraint and you should hear it from us early, not discover it during budget approval. Where the owner cannot claim the credit, the structure of the project sometimes can be arranged so that a party who can does — but that is a question for your advisors before it is a question for your contractor, and we will not pretend otherwise.
New build is simpler — the field goes in before the landscaping, the distribution is designed around the system, and there is no interim heating to maintain.
Retrofit is entirely doable and is most of the market. The questions are whether the existing distribution can run at heat pump temperatures, where the plant will sit, and how the building stays heated during changeover. All three are answerable, and all three belong in the feasibility stage rather than in a change order.
Yes, and most commercial projects are exactly that. The drilling is disruptive for a defined window and the changeover is planned around the building's schedule. Interim heating is part of the plan, not an afterthought.
Sometimes. Heat pumps deliver at lower temperatures than boilers, so oversized emitters are an advantage and undersized ones are the constraint. This is established during feasibility, because it materially affects the cost.
Not directly — it requires a taxable Canadian corporation. It is better to design the business case without it than to build a budget around money that is not available to you.
Related
Request an assessment
Tell us the building, the site and how long you expect to own it. If ground source is wrong for you, that is the first thing we will say.