HOW HOMES WORK
Is geothermal worth it, and what does it do to a home’s value?
Geothermal comes up on almost every Wilden listing that has it, and the question is always some version of the same thing: is this a feature or a problem?
It’s a feature. But it’s a feature with a bill attached, and the reason buyers get nervous is that almost nobody explains the bill to them. So here it is.
I spent six years as a journeyman HVAC technician before I got my licence. Mechanical systems are the part of a house I actually understand, rather than the part I read off a listing sheet.
How it works, in one paragraph
A geothermal system doesn’t burn anything. It moves heat between your house and the ground using a buried loop of pipe and a heat pump. In winter it pulls heat out of the ground; in summer it dumps heat back into it. Ground temperature a few metres down barely changes across the year, which is what makes it efficient — the system is always working against a mild target instead of against a February morning.
The part nobody explains: you may not own the loop
This is the single biggest source of confusion, and it’s the one that makes buyers walk.
In several Kelowna developments, the buried loop isn’t yours. A utility owns it and you pay for access, the same way you’d pay for any other utility. That’s not a defect and it’s not a hidden fee — it’s the deal that made the system affordable to install in the first place. But it does mean there’s a recurring charge that shows up on no home inspection report.
On a Long Ridge Drive listing in Wilden, the loop access fee was $409 a quarter, billed by the loop owner. Servicing was separate and modest — roughly $60 for an annual visit to change filters and test loop pressure.
Those are one home’s numbers, not a rule. Different developments, different loop owners, different agreements. Get the actual figure in writing for the actual house. If a listing doesn’t disclose it, ask, and be a little suspicious of a vague answer.
Is it worth it? What I tell buyers
Ask three questions. Who owns the loop. What the recurring charge is. When the loop pressure was last tested.
Budget the loop fee like a strata fee. It’s a fixed monthly-equivalent cost. Put it in the affordability math up front rather than discovering it at subject removal, when you have days rather than weeks to decide how you feel about it.
Don’t discount the whole house for it. Geothermal usually replaces a furnace and an air conditioner. Compare the loop fee to the gas bill and the AC repair fund it displaced, not to zero.
Does geothermal increase your home’s value?
Buyers price uncertainty as risk, and risk always costs more than the truth. If your loop fee is $409 a quarter, publishing that number is cheaper than letting a buyer imagine a worse one.
Have the paperwork ready before the first showing: the loop agreement, the fee schedule, the last service record. A buyer who gets a straight answer in hour one stops treating the system as a reason to hesitate.
Where this shows up around here
Wilden is the obvious one, and it’s where most of my geothermal files have been. It’s not the only place — plenty of custom builds across the Central Okanagan went this route, particularly ones built in the last fifteen years by builders who cared about operating cost.
If you’re looking at a specific house and want to know what the mechanical side really means for what it’s worth, that’s a conversation I’m genuinely happy to have. It’s the part of this job I liked before it was my job.
How I work with buyers · How I work with sellers · Poly B, and what it does to a sale
