Here we document the effect of flow configuration on the heat transfer performance of a serpentine shaped stream embedded in a conducting solid. Several configurations with fixed volume of fluid are considered: U-shaped with varying spacing between the parallel portions of the U, serpentine shapes with three elbows, and conducting soil with several parallelepipedal shapes. We show that the spacing must be greater than a critical value in order for the heat transfer density of the stream-solid configuration to be the highest that it can be. Spacings larger than this critical value do not yield improvements in heat transfer density. We also show that even though the heat transfer is time dependent, the stream-solid configuration has an effective number of heat transfer units N tu that is nearly constant in time. The larger N tu values correspond to the configurations with greater heat transfer density. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.