With the growing desire to increase renewable energy sources and limit the emission of greenhouse gases, ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) are becoming more common for everyday use by homeowners. They are the most efficient technology in space heating and cooling available today. However, with the large upfront cost of drilling for the installation of ground heat exchangers (GHEs), some homeowners have decided against the use of these systems despite the low operating cost. To offset some of the drilling cost, a new option is to install the heat exchanger within the steel structural piles used in the new construction of homes, thus creating a “thermo-active foundation” for the building or an in-ground helical steel GHE for existing buildings. With this relatively new area of research, only a limited number of configurations of the heat exchanger have been explored. This work explores the double U-loop ground heat exchanger configuration coupled with a solar thermal collector to further enhance the efficiency and long-term performance. The solution was implemented in a finite volume-based computational fluid dynamics tool considering Minnesota's cold climate. The developed model was thoroughly validated with other experimental work using actual temperature and weather data, ensuring its accuracy. Additionally, the influence of several parameters on the heat pump's coefficient of performance was investigated. Results show that coupling the foundation heat exchanger with solar thermal increases the annual COP from 3.60 to 3.90 and 4.15 for the base case, 2 m² solar 1 case, and 3.8 m^{2 solar 2 case respectively.}