Clifford, the Big Red Truck

Last Wednesday we had a special delivery:

A Big Red Truck, which I promptly named Clifford. What is this big red truck for, you ask? Well let me tell you. It's to drill for our geothermal heating system. How fun does that sound ?! Yeah, not really. 

For anyone who doesn't know what geothermal is I'll give you a brief summary of what I know about it (which isn't much to be totally honest with you). Basically you are using the temperature of the earth to heat and cool your house. In the summer if you go out and dig in the garden the soil that is a few inches deep is cool to the touch, which means that it is colder than the air around you. In the winter if you were to dig deeper than the frost line the earth is warmer than the air around you. When using geothermal you are using this to your advantage. To access the earth's natural heating and cooling system you drill deep into the ground (usually a couple hundred feet). Into the drilled holes you run a pipe that connects to heat pumps inside your house. You then continuously run water through those pipes. The heat pumps then, through energy transfer, convert the temperature of the water in the pipes into energy that is used to heat and cool your house. Pretty cool, hey? 

There are a few reasons why we wanted to go this route:

1) It's energy efficient and good for the environment.

2) No gas bill. Ever. Out here in the boonies we didn't have the utilities run to our lot so using geothermal eliminated the need to have a gas line run at all. 

3) To prove that it works. I am not sure if there is general skepticism around geothermal or if it's more the small town mentality where we live or the fact that we live quite a ways north but the majority of people we talk to seem to think that geothermal isn't going to work. I think we've even been laughed at a few times. 

We've been trying to get the drilling and trenching done for this since last fall but the weather (and the installer's schedule) has been working against us. We finally finished the drilling on Monday though:

Yes, it looks like a swamp pit right now. There are 12 holes, 5 inches in diameter, and 150 feet deep. It's so wet because you have to keep flushing out the drilled holes with water so that dirt doesn't get in the way when you are putting the pipe down. 

Toward the end of next week the installer is coming back to tie all the lines together and finish the install in the house. That means that I'll be able to have hot water. I can shower and do laundry in my own house!!  Oh, and it also means we won't freeze this winter. That's probably important too.