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Geo-exchange
Our geo-exchange
heating and cooling project in the Belcaro neighborhood of Denver is
moving along well. We began drilling the 22 bore loop field the week of
June 16th. On Friday, June 20th, while the final bores were being
drilled, having the pipe dropped in, and grouted, we invited our friends
and associates to visit the site and see the process. It was a beautiful
day and lots of people came. Also present were Cathy Proctor of the
Denver Business Journal and her photographer, Kathleen Lavine. A
great article about the project and our company was printed in the July
4th edition of the Journal.
Another interesting project currently under way is a 15 bore geo-exchange project we are doing in the Chenango area south-east of Denver. We are converting the existing main house from conventional gas-forced air and conventional air-conditioning, to geo-exchange forced-air heating and cooling. Additionally, we are fitting a new-construction 2000 square foot pool house with geo-exchange radiant floors and forced-air cooling. Heat for the pool, a spa, and domestic hot-water is provided by the geo-exchange system, and there is a high-efficiency condensing boiler for pick-up loads, back-up, and a snowmelt system for the concrete pool deck.
We have just completed a test bore in Pueblo, Colorado. Pueblo School District 65 is commencing work on a replacement elementary school very soon. The new building will be heated and cooled entirely by geo-exchange. The test bore is to determine the thermal conductivity of the earth under the site. Preliminary indications are that the system will be made up of 130 bores, each 300 feet deep.
Radiant
One of our clients in the Country Club neighborhood asked us to change an existing gas-forced air system in their house to boiler-based radiators. No retrofit is without its challenges but this application was interesting because we wanted to avoid as much plaster repair as possible. Parts of the house underwent remodeling, but most of the areas we were in were not being touched. Using existing ducts to run our supply and return lines, individually controlled European flat-panel radiators were fitted throughout the house. The heat source is a wall-hung, weather responsive Viessmann Vitodens 94% efficient condensing boiler.
The Colorado Governor’s Office of Energy Management and Conservation asked us to do some work for a low-income housing facility in Grand Junction. We have completed Phase I, which involved installing 3 Viessmann Vitodens boilers, each producing 230,000 btu’s per hour, and three 120 gallon storage tanks. The boilers and storage tanks take the entire domestic hot water load from two existing 5 million btu/hr. boilers. Phase II will make it possible, in addition to the entire domestic hot water load, to base load the space heating for the complex on the new high-efficiency boilers. New control logic will rotate demand back to the old large boilers only when peak demand calls for it as a back-up. We expect the total annual energy saving to be 30 to 50 percent.
A very interesting remodel of an old commercial building in the 900 block of Santa Fe is the
Nine10Arts building being developed by Cheryl Spector of
Spector and Associates, an architectural firm in Denver. Cheryl is very active in the Green Building Council and this is a LEEDS project. For more on her and the exciting building, see the
www.910Arts.org website. We are installing three Viessmann Vitodens boilers to provide hot water for European flat-panel radiators and for two indirect-fired (side-arm) water heaters. Flat-panel radiators are particularly useful in this building because the studio spaces have moveable walls. Because the radiators are strategically placed, they can heat the spaces perfectly with any wall configuration. This is a very effective and highly efficient system, and because of that, the building ends up being very “green”.
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