Will installing a ground source heat pump damage my lawn or landscaping?
There may be some drilling and/or excavation involved in installing a GSHP, but rest assured that there will be no long-term negative effects on your lawn or yard vegetation.
Perhaps you saw the words “excavation” and “drilling” or are wondering what will happen to your yard with a few hundred feet of piping underground.
The process of installing the heat pump system’s piping outdoors will result in disturbance to your yard. Depending on what type of set up you use for the piping (read about the differences here), more or less digging will be needed. Vertical wells drilled into your yard will take up very little land area and will result in the least disturbance to vegetation. Horizontal wells will result in more excavation depending on the layout of the piping. Regardless of the setup, the affected areas in your yard can be restored with grass seed or sod: within a few months, you’ll never know those areas were dug up to install three hundred feet of piping!
Once installed, the piping will not have any negative effects on the vegetation. Most trenches for horizontal wells are quite narrow, and vertical wells are far underground.