# Air Conditioning From Faucet Water?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/air-conditioning-from-faucet-water/558468>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 27, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/air-conditioning-from-faucet-water/558468 "2010-10-27T01:04:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![ethelbert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@ethelbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ethelbert)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/air-conditioning-from-faucet-water/558468/21 "2010-10-28T15:38:11Z")

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The reason the water is colder is because it is traveling underground most of the time where the temperature is generally a constant 55 degrees F. Direct Exchange geothermal energy systems use this to provide both heating and cooling, but instead of tap water they generally use refrigerant in a closed loop system. When that refrigerant has given up its heat (or gained heat if used in cooling), it is sent back into the earth where it is warmed or cooled to 55 degrees.

> **[Direct exchange geothermal heat pump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_exchange_geothermal_heat_pump)**
>
> A direct exchange (DX) geothermal heat pump is a type of ground source heat pump in which refrigerant circulates through copper tubing placed in the ground unlike other ground source heat pumps where refrigerant is restricted to the heat pump itself with a secondary loop in the ground filled with a mixture of water and anti-freeze.
> The simplicity of the DX designs is that high efficiencies can be reached using a shorter and smaller amount of buried tubing thereby reducing both the footprint and ...

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