Can a geothermal basket precondition the air for controlled residential ventilation?

Hello everyone,

From the very beginning, I've been thinking about how we can keep the temperature at an acceptable level (24° to 25°) in the new house during the summer. We are installing underfloor heating with a heat pump and cooling function. We also want to at least have an air conditioning system pre-installed.

Since we will have a controlled residential ventilation system, I’ve also been wondering whether it’s really great to have warm outside air blown into the house. Today, by pure chance, I came across something called an Erdwärmekorb on the internet.

Does anyone here have any idea if something like that is worth it to pre-cool the air? Of course, it would have the same positive effect in winter to pre-warm the air.

It doesn’t seem very complicated and is supposedly relatively stress-free in a water protection area.

I have zero knowledge about heating or anything similar, so I’m just asking plainly…

Regards

Since we will have a controlled residential ventilation system, I’ve always had my doubts about whether it’s really a good idea to blow warm outside air into the house. Today, purely by chance, I came across something called a geothermal basket on the internet.

It is a very old "invention" (actually known and used for thousands of years, but seriously used about 50-60 years ago as you mentioned). You can search for air wells or air-geothermal exchangers. You will find a lot of information including videos, building instructions, etc. It helps both in summer and winter, as the air for the controlled residential ventilation system is preheated.

Thank you very much for your keywords!

I did some reading, it seems that an air well is rather difficult to implement in heavily clayey soils. Does a geothermal basket work on the same principle? Does it also have such a snorkel?

How am I supposed to imagine this, currently we have planned intake and exhaust shafts on the house for the heat pump (air/water) and the controlled residential ventilation. How would such a planning for an air well change the existing planning? I would also be interested in the cost factor here (earthworks I see as less problematic since we have a very nice excavator), is the technology for the "normal" controlled residential ventilation easy to change? Does one need a different controlled residential ventilation? And also important, our building application has finally been approved, would this be a change that has to go back to the district office or can the municipality simply allow it?

Maybe someone can still give me a few tips...

Basically a good thing and if there is a possibility to set it up, I would do it. Even though the solution from will certainly not be comparable, he at least has expertise and possibly tips for implementation. I myself have never dealt with it in depth, as we had no possibility for realization and at the time I had at least heard about possible disadvantages and risks like possible "condensation... mold formation.... etc." I don’t want to unsettle anyone, but I think that proper execution should be highly valued here. Otherwise, I can say that you are already well equipped with underfloor cooling to keep the temperature at a tolerable level. Even better would be the air conditioning, which you are also already considering! So everything will be fine ;)

just keep in mind that air is a poor heat conductor with low capacity. That means you need a high airflow for serious cooling. This year, I haven’t had the temperature in the house go above 22.5°. When built solidly, the mass works like a good shock absorber in a car. It absorbs temperature peaks well.

The pre-installation of the air conditioning is only supposed to provide relief in an emergency sometime in the future. The goal is actually to achieve as much as possible with simpler passive means. Here I find it reads somehow very plausible - to ventilate with pre-cooled air. But since our planning is already finalized, the question is how complicated it is to change it again. I don't want any botched work; everything should be done well and correctly.


We are building a KfW40 house using timber frame construction. Since we will certainly have good shading and will basically also try to pay the best possible attention to the other boundary conditions (windows closed, etc.), I am currently only a little worried about the warm outside air being sucked in. And here is exactly the point, if you can pre-cool this air with little effort, this sounds like THE solution at least for this... But I have no idea how much effort that would be.