01
The loop
Usually the largest single line. Depth, borehole count and ground conditions decide it, and the site decides those. A vertical field on a tight urban lot is a different animal from a horizontal field on open land.
Money
No price on this page. Here is exactly why.
A geothermal number depends on things nobody can see from a website. What we can do is tell you what moves it, how to compare two bids honestly, and where the published rebate figures are misleading.
The drivers
Four things move the number, and only one is the equipment
02
The real load
A measured heat-loss and heat-gain calculation, not a rule of thumb off floor area. Undersize it and January runs on backup resistance heat; oversize it and you bought ground you never needed.
03
The existing plant
Distribution sized for a boiler or furnace does not always suit a heat pump's temperatures and flows. Sometimes that means modifications, sometimes nothing.
04
Access
A drill rig has to physically reach the field, and spoil has to leave. Downtown and open suburban sites are different jobs with identical equipment.
How to compare two geothermal bids fairly
Ask every bidder for the heat-loss calculation, the loop design that follows from it, and the estimated annual running cost. If a bid arrives without those three, you are being sold equipment rather than a designed system, and the prices are not comparable. Ask also who carries the cost if the loop turns out undersized — that single question separates a design-build from a supply-and-pray.
Incentives
The rebate number most Ontario sites quote wrong
Checked against the government pages on 18 August 2026. If you are reading this much later, check the links again — and ask us, because we check them per job.
- The federal Canada Greener Homes Grant is closed. Natural Resources Canada's own page is headed “Closed”. Contractors still advertising a $5,000 federal grant for this work are quoting a programme that ended.
- It is $2,000 per ton, capped at $12,000 — not a flat $12,000. Only a 6-ton closed-loop system reaches the cap; a 3-ton house gets $6,000. That rate applies to homes heated by electricity, oil, propane or wood. On natural gas the ground-source rebate is a flat $3,000, and rentals are $3,000 regardless of fuel.
- New builds are not eligible. The programme requires an existing home occupied for at least six months. If you are building, this rebate is not part of your budget — and any contractor putting it in your proposal is misleading you.
- It is residential only. Eligible homes are detached, semi-detached, row, town or mobile homes, or an individual unit with its own heating system. Commercial and apartment buildings are outside this programme entirely — different streams, different caps, different arithmetic.
- Pre-approval must happen before work starts, through a participating contractor, with equipment on NRCan's qualified products list. Start first and the rebate is gone — the sequence is not a formality.
- We have not printed an end date, because the province has not published one. Several contractor blogs quote a deadline that appears on no government page.
Sources: saveonenergy.ca · NRCan. Two further conditions people discover too late: the equipment must appear on the ENERGY STAR certified geothermal list with an AHRI certificate, and the whole application is filed by a contractor on the province's Participating list — with written pre-approval before work begins. As of August 2026 the province has paused new contractor registrations for the heat pump stream, so no installer in Ontario can join right now. We will confirm in writing what a specific building qualifies for, and say plainly when the answer is nothing.
Get the number for your building
A site visit, a load calculation, and a range you can hold us to — with the running cost beside it, and whichever incentives are genuinely open that week.