Heating your home using outdoor, underground heat pumps can improve the efficiency of your indoor heating system, reduce the associated running costs and free up extra space inside the home that would otherwise be used for boilers and stoves. Ground source heat pumps absorb renewable energy from beneath the surface of the earth. That energy can be carried back up to the surface via a channel of moving water or air.
Wear protective clothing. Dig a set of trenches in the ground using a mechanical digger. Neaten the trenches manually using a spade. Dig to below the frost line, which is the point beneath which ground frost does not affect the flow of hot water. Aim to reach to a depth of five feet for horizontal pipe work or up to 330 feet for vertical pipes if you have a small yard.
Attach a heat pump containing a heat exchanger (or "evaporator") and compressor to the ground loop to push the water through the pipe work. Put the heat pump in a locked box on the side of your property at the source of the main water pipes. Run a cold water pipe into the ground loop and a hot water pipe up from the ground loop, through the heat pump and on to a hot water cylinder inside the home, where it can be stored and distributed to the radiators and under-floor heating systems.