Townhouse Geothermal

Last evening, one of the neighbors asked what the big truck was doing in our yard. The first thing out of my mouth was that we were going for "Yard of the Month".  It got a laugh and then we told them it was for a Geothermal well. We got blank stares. No one in our neighborhood has heard of it, except for the science teacher next door.  Once we said, Green Heating and Air Conditioning, they were impressed. People like the idea of green, but the green movement hasn't totally caught on in the US.

Day 2 of the Geothermal installation is underway. The drillers arrived and set up straw bales and what is called a dirt bag. The dirt bag has an 8" PVC pipe that sits on the ground by the drill. When the water gets turned on during drilling, the water flows through the pipe and into the dirt bag. The dirt bag, silt fence and straw bales keep from having a mud flow down the side of the hill. The dirt bag fills with dirt and water and the water slowly leaches through the bag.

After they drilled down about 125 feet, they stopped and pulled the drill out and began to put sleeves in the drill. They have a 2nd truck parked next to the drill and they use the crane on the drill to lift and lower the pipes. As each section of pipe is lowered, the next section is welded in place. I've been trying to take pictures but I was always told not to look when someone is welding. Even when I would visit auto body shops for my job, I always looked away when the shop technicians were welding. The welding is creating a lovely glow inside the house-remember, these guys are right outside our front door.

Drilling begins

Dirt Bag and silt fence

Geothermal

Today the drillers are here to set up the drill for our Geothermal heating and air conditioning system.

I only know that it's green to use Geothermal. I am not a scientist, or engineer. I only know that a typical heating and air conditioning system uses the air and has to work pretty hard to change warm air to cool air or cold air to warm air depending on the season. A geothermal system uses the ground which stays at a constant temperature.

The unique thing about our system is that we live in a townhouse. We have a 15' garden area in front of our house and the well for the geothermal will have be drilled straight down 500 feet. The guys from the drilling company were laughing about how small an area they have to work with, but they are confident they can do it.

Right now they are working to take down the front deck so they can get the drilling rig in close to the house.

It's quite interesting to open the front door and have a drilling rig staring you in the face.