|
Durnan said he began seriously considering an
alternative to his gas propane system when the
bills reached $600 to $700 every six weeks. He
estimated he pays $4,500 to $5,000 a year for
heating, cooling and hot water. With the new
system, those costs should be reduced to $1,300,
he estimated. Durnan, 42, is like a lot of
customers who are making the shift to
geoexchange, or geothermal, as it is often
called. College-educated, with a background in
science, Durnan, a computer programmer, works
from home, as does his wife. They have a
2-year-old son and another child on the way. "I
had heard about it in college and then saw a
show about it on 'This Old House' in February or
March. Then I got one of those gas propane
bills. I went to my wife and said, 'I want to
tell you something.' She said, 'if you think
it's for the best.' So I went on the Internet
and started doing research."
There was good reason for the couple to proceed
cautiously. The upfront costs of installing a
geoexchange system are considerably higher than
buying a traditional system, due mostly to the
cost of drilling the necessary holes. For Durnan
and his wife, Anna Laura Martinez, who are
having four 300-foot bores drilled in their side
yard - one more than they currently need, for
when they finish their basement - the cost is
$42,000. "This is not a process you should step
lightly into," Durnan said. At current prices,
it will take six or seven years for the system
to pay for itself, Durnan estimates. If fuel
prices continue to rise, the payoff period will
be shorter. The financial benefits come after
that, but Durnan is moving forward with other
plans to reduce his carbon footprint. "I'm
getting a Mini Cooper, too," he said.
Geothermal heating-and-cooling systems tap into
the constant, moderate temperatures found below
the surface of the earth - 53 degrees in Chester
County, according to Bill Sinton, president and
owner of Sinton Air Conditioning and Heating
Inc. in Kennett Square, who is putting in the
Durnan system and has been doing geothermal work
since the 1970s. In its most basic terms, a
geothermal system removes heat from the earth to
heat buildings in the winter and removes heat
from inside to cool them in the summer. The
system captures the free energy from the earth
by using a series of pipes buried in the ground.
Multiple holes are bored about 10 feet apart. A
double pipe connected with a U-bend is inserted
into each hole. The hole is filled with grout to
provide good contact around it and to seal it.
The vertical pipes are connected to a header
system horizontally a few feet below the
surface. Capacity is not based on depth but
rather on how much pipe is in the ground and the
overall |
conductivity of the borehole. Sinton said he has
never had a problem with leaking pipes because
they are made of high-density polyethylene. "We
have hundreds of miles in the ground and have
never had a leak because there are no joints in
the pipe," he added. While there are several
ways to form the loops, in Chester County
the preferred method is called a vertical closed
loop that requires holes to be drilled and
connected with piping. Geothermal systems are
not new. They were introduced in the U.S. in the
late 1940s and used in ancient times by the
Greeks and Romans. But interest in them has
jumped in recent years as the price of
traditional energy sources have increased. "Our
fastest area of growth has been the Northeast,"
said John Kelly, executive director of the
Geothermal Heat Pump Association, a nonprofit
national trade group based in Washington, D.C.
"Oil is more common in the Northeast," Kelly
noted. "Our volume of calls for references is up
there."
Some Chester County business owners are seeing
the same thing. At B.L. Myers Brothers, a
drilling company that specializes in water wells
and remediation work, geothermal is making up an
increasing percentage of the business, said
David B. Myers, president and CEO of the
124-year-old West Brandywine firm. While the
water business has been hurt by the growth of
water utilities and the residential building
downturn, geothermal has picked up to the point
where it now makes up about 30 percent of Myers'
work. The company has been drilling geothermal
wells since the early 1980s and has done jobs
for West Chester University, the Spring-Ford
School District, Easttown and West Bradford
townships and the Hershey's Mill retirement
community among others. It is about to begin
drilling holes for the avian building at the
Philadelphia Zoo. "Going green is a big topic
right now, but this is something that's been
around for thousands of years," Myers said.
"This is not a fad."
When West Bradford built a new barrack to lease
to the state police in 2004, it decided to heat
and cool it with geothermal. Troopers there
liked it so much that when it came time to
replace the heating and cooling system in the
township building, West Bradford went with
geothermal again. Township Manager Jack M.
|
Hines said the system that's being installed now
will replace four oil burners and a 2,000-gallon
oil tank. Even at an initial cost of $400,000,
Hines said the township originally expected the
system would pay for itself in 10 years. As oil
prices rose, it lowered that estimate to seven
years. "That feels very good," Hines said.
"Unfortunately, with the price of oil going up,
it feels better every day. It may be a shorter
period." Hines was impressed enough with the
systems that he decided to put one in his own
house. "It just seems too easy to me," he said.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy,
there are 1 million-plus geothermal systems in
operation in the U.S., with 50,000 new
geothermal heat pumps installed each year. To
date, the market has been dominated by
government institutions and school districts
that plan to stay in their buildings 25 to 30
years and businesses looking to cut down on
operations costs. When oil was $25 to $30 a
barrel, geothermal couldn't compete with
traditional fuels due to the high initial costs,
Myers noted. Now with oil topping $135 a barrel,
it's a different story, he said. "We just
received four calls this morning," Myers said
recently as he watched two Myers workers drill
the first hole for Durnan's new system. In East
Pikeland, Earth Rising Homes of Phoenixville is
developing a mixed residential/retail
development on Prizer Road using geothermal
heating and cooling as well as solar panels on
the roof. The 20-unit development to be called
Kimberton Village Green is in its final design
with Earth Rising's president, Dan Orzech,
hoping to begin building next year. Orzech said
he has no concerns about using geothermal in his
development because he has it in his home. "I
didn't want to send any more money overseas to
heat and cool my house," he said. "It's kind of
all over the place but people don't know about
it, in part because it's not flashy. It's not
like having solar panels on the roof. What I
love about it is you're not burning anything.
There's no carbon monoxide in the house." In
Newlin, luxury home builder Wayne Megill is
offering a geothermal heating system, worth as
much as $40,000, for free through spring at his
Pocopson Creek Estates as an incentive to
potential buyers. And for Bill Sinton,
geothermal now makes up 90 percent of his air
conditioning and heating company's business. As
a measure of growth, Sinton said he put in seven
geothermal pumps in 2002; in the past year he
put in 100. "I believe we are just starting to
see the enlightenment period right now," he
said. "In today's market, I spend most of my
time taking out oil or liquid propane gas
systems and putting in geothermal. The customer
will get his return on investment in four to six
years. After that, they're printing money." |
