Horizontal vs Vertical Loop Calculator

Vertical bores and horizontal trenches move the same amount of heat but need very different amounts of pipe, land, and money, and this calculator lines up the tradeoff side by side. It uses the same rule-of-thumb footage-per-ton figures as the ground loop sizing calculator — roughly 175 ft/ton for vertical bores and 500 ft/ton for horizontal trenches — both scaled by a soil conductivity factor, since poorly-conducting soil needs proportionally more pipe of either type to move the same heat. Multiplying total footage by your cost-per-foot for each method (drilling rigs cost far more per foot than trenching equipment, which is why horizontal is usually cheaper up front despite needing far more total pipe) gives the vertical and horizontal installed costs and the dollar difference between them.

For horizontal loops specifically, the calculator also estimates land: it divides total trench footage into 200 ft loop runs, assumes those runs sit 10 ft apart, and converts the resulting area to acres (43,560 sq ft per acre) to check against the land you say you have available. What this comparison deliberately leaves out is long-term performance: vertical loops sit at more stable, deeper ground temperatures year-round and typically deliver a modestly better system COP over time than horizontal loops, which are more exposed to seasonal surface-temperature swings — that performance edge isn't reflected anywhere in the cost numbers here, so a horizontal loop that looks cheaper today may cost more in electricity over the system's life if land and installation costs are otherwise close.