Solar Heating System Scenario

Q: I recently read an article on the www.homepower.com website where they profiled Roy Tonnessen's self-installed solar hot water system. The parts cost him aroun $900US. It seems like a simple enough design that could be improved upon and/or maybe built for less. Now here's my situation: My brother is planning on building a house. I, being the electrical engineer and a RE enthusiats, am trying to come up with some RE ideas for his house. First of all, it will be heated/cooled by a geothermal system. I see that some companies use their geothermal heat pump to heat up the hot water for the house. So my first assault of questions is: Is this worth the added cost? Would a solar hot water system prove to be more efficient? A combination perhaps? Is it possible to get by without a "top-off" water heater system? If not, then what's out there for products? The next idea I had was using the solar heating system to heat the driveway and the garage (which would be nearby the house.) Basically, a piping system would be set in the concrete floor of the garage and underneath the asphalt of the driveway. Now here come the questions... 1) Is this reasonably feasible? 2) Should I just have one appropriately sized hot water storage tank to do all three? (DHW, garage, and driveway) 3) Or three seperate tanks and some fancy puck handling to control them? ;) 4) In the summertime, could the heat in the asphalt actually provide heat to the storage tank? 5) What type of piping would work best for underneath the asphalt? 6) Could the piping break and leak if a lot of weight is on the driveway? 7) Should there be insulation underneath the piping grids? Reflective material? It would be nice if the home users could monitor the system from the main floor and control it as necessary. For example, it's Sunday and a sunny day in january. The family is gone all day visiting family and friends. The solar panels are doing their thing. The family comes home late that night and listen to the weather forecast to find out that it is giving light snow the following morning. Since they are both working for most of the day, they opt to heat up the driveway just for the morning instead of saving it for the domestic hot water. The location is Nova Scotia, Canada. Our winters are not as cold as interior Canada but they are quite windy and humid since we are on the coast. You could have two inches of snow on the driveway and it wouldn't melt. But if you cleared off a little piece to expose the asphalt, then the snow will melt in no time as the asphalt quickly absorbs the heat from the sun. So that's why I have the idea of a heated driveway. Just have enough to get it started. So I don't know what I just wrote here but I know there's some smart and experienced people out there who can give me some good recommendations. So what do you think?

A: My understanding of the geoexchange systems is that they use waste heat to produce hot water when they are in cooling mode. I don't think that they will do this when in heating mode, although I could be wrong. If I'm correct, you'd want the solar heating system for cool and cold weather. I wish that I could afford one of those systems myself... They use "superheat" to heat the water. It isn't "waste" heat but it is "quality" heat in that the superheat temperature is high enough to heat water. "Superheat" is the degrees of temperature beyond saturation temperature of the fluid. The refrigerant has to be cooled to the saturation temperature before it gives up most of its heat in condensation. The heat can heat your house or heat your water. Unless you enjoy throwing away money, don't be the first or second (or even the 10th) person in your area to put in a ground source heat pump. There are places where they are quite useful and popular and other places where they aren't. This is a good location for wind power. NS coastline has good consistent winds when comared to other areas.

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