The Benefits of Geothermal
A geothermal heat pump burns nothing and sits nowhere outside. It moves heat between your house and the ground, which holds near 60 degrees all year. Everything below comes out of that one difference: roughly half the heating and cooling energy use gone, no outdoor unit, and nearly free summer hot water.
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I am Dave Hartzell, 47 years in this trade, 15 plus running my own shop in Kingfisher.
About $4.50 of heat for every $1 of electricity
A furnace burns fuel to make heat, and cannot make more heat than the fuel holds. A geothermal heat pump does not make heat. It moves heat already in the ground, and electricity only pays for the moving.
At a coefficient of performance around 4.5, that is about $4.50 of heat for every $1 of electricity. In July it runs backward.
Over a year it removes roughly 50% of the energy your heating and cooling uses. Energy use, not bill: your bill also carries the water heater and everything else. That ratio is what COP means.
The ground does not care that it is 105 degrees out
An air conditioner dumps house heat into the outside air. On an Oklahoma July afternoon that air is 105 degrees, the worst place to put heat and the hour you need the machine most. January reverses it, pulling heat from a 10 degree morning.
A few feet down that swing is gone. Oklahoma ground holds near 60 degrees year round, so geothermal trades with the ground and is strongest when a conventional system is weakest. See how a geothermal heat pump works.
Long, low runtime instead of blast and stop
A single stage system has two settings, wide open and off. It slams the house down to temperature, shuts off, and drifts back up. You feel that as a cold room, a warm room, and a house at 74 that still feels clammy.
Geothermal runs long cycles at lower capacity. Long runtime strips humidity out, because moisture keeps condensing off the coil the whole time air moves across it. The result is a narrower swing between rooms and drier air in August.
No outdoor unit to hail, steal, or bury
You buy the loop once, and swap the smaller half later
Geothermal is two purchases that age nothing alike. The indoor equipment outlives conventional equipment because it never sees weather: no sun, no hail, no freeze and thaw, no clippings in a coil.
The loop is the other half, and its design life is measured in decades: fused polyethylene pipe in a sealed circuit, buried and left alone. So conventional heating and cooling is a repeating purchase, the outdoor unit dies and you buy another. Geothermal is one loop and a smaller equipment swap years later, on ground work still serving the next owner.
Free or close to free hot water all summer
In cooling season the system hauls heat out of your house and rejects it into the ground. A desuperheater intercepts some of that heat and routes it into your water heater instead.
That heat was already paid for and headed into the ground either way, so through an Oklahoma summer it can carry a large share of the hot water for close to nothing. It does less in winter. Here is what a desuperheater is.
No flame, no flue, no gas line
There is no burner. Nothing ignites, so there is no heat exchanger to crack, no flue pulling combustion gas out of the house, and no carbon monoxide risk from the heating system. If a gas water heater or fireplace stays, keep the detectors.
For a propane house it is bigger: no delivery to schedule, no tank gauge to watch in January, no gambling on propane prices.
That is the environmental case too: no fuel burned at the house, less energy for the same comfort. More on why geothermal is considered green energy.
A free estimate, and a real look at the property
The estimate on a new system is free, and it is not a number over the phone. I walk the property and look at what decides the design: the soil, the room for a loop, the ductwork you already have, and the real load instead of a square footage guess.
Geothermal punishes a guess harder than a furnace, because the loop gets sized to the same guess. If the money is better spent elsewhere, I will say so. Same standard as on whether geothermal is worth it in Oklahoma.
Five financing partners, and a $0 down lease
I work with five lenders and no others: Synchrony, up to 18 months at 0%, Wells Fargo, Wisetack, Klarna, and JB Financing. Wisetack and JB Financing run a soft credit pull, so checking does not touch your score. See the geothermal financing page.
There is also a $0 down lease on geothermal. I am not putting payment figures on a web page: the numbers move with the system and the terms come from the lease company, not me. Call and I will walk you through them.
Utility rebates, and your co-op changes the number by thousands
CKenergy Electric Cooperative pays $2,000 per ton on geothermal, up to $24,000 per member, off the top of the job.
Read this carefully if you are anywhere near me. CKenergy covers Blaine and Canadian counties and counties west and south of there. It does not cover Kingfisher County. A Kingfisher address is not on that program, and my shop being in Kingfisher does not change it.
Other Oklahoma utilities publish their own amounts, nowhere near each other. Rural Electric Cooperative out of Lindsay pays $1,050 per ton, East Central and Oklahoma Lake Region $750 per ton, Cookson Hills $500 per ton. Cimarron pays a flat $600, and the OMPA WISE municipal program $800 per cooling ton.
Which line belongs to you can move the job by thousands of dollars, decided by the meter on your house, not the town on your mail. I confirm the utility at quote time. CKenergy has its own page.
What I am not going to tell you
The federal residential geothermal tax credit, Section 25D, has expired. The IRS states it plainly: the credit is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. Anybody selling geothermal on that credit is reading an old script. Ask your tax professional and look to the rebates above.
Geothermal is a premium purchase. It costs more up front than a furnace and an air conditioner, every time, and I will not pretend otherwise. What the difference buys is the operating cost, the comfort, indoor equipment, and ground work that outlasts several sets of machines. A good trade for a lot of houses here, and not for every one.
Questions homeowners ask
How much does geothermal save in Oklahoma?
Roughly 50% of your heating and cooling energy use compared with conventional equipment. That is energy use, not your whole electric bill. Underneath it is a COP near 4.5, about $4.50 of heat for every $1 of electricity.
Does the CKenergy geothermal rebate cover Kingfisher County Oklahoma?
No. CKenergy covers Blaine and Canadian counties and counties west and south of there. Kingfisher County is not on that program, and a different utility serves it, so the amount is different. Call 405-375-4822 and I will confirm.
Is there still a federal tax credit for geothermal in 2026?
Not for a home. The Section 25D residential credit has expired: the IRS says it is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. Oklahoma utility rebates are still active.
See the whole picture before you decide
I will walk the property, look at the ground, the ductwork and what heats the house today, then give you a straight number with the loop priced as its own line. The estimate is free.
IGSHPA Accredited, Master HVAC License, NATE Certified. Geothermal statewide across Oklahoma.