A home at 43 Bessborough Dr. is being converted to geothermal heating, a technique which uses the earth’s heat to heat and cool the building. It would seem to be a fairly rare project. The home is undergoing a renovation and with it, workmen are drilling down an unknown distance to tap the heat of the earth. As one worker at the site said, “This house is going to be completely disconnected from natural gas.” At the left, a bin containing mud from drilling is being evacuated. At right, shots of the drilling equipment.
Geothermal heating relies on an energy exchange between the air within the building being heated and the ground. Below ten feet the earth’s temperature is fairly constant (generally between 50º-56°F). During the summer when the ambient temperature of the building exceeds that of the ground heat pumps are used to pump heat from the building into the transfer medium (typically water with small amounts of ethanol or glycol) and is subsequently pumped through narrow pipes into the ground so that the heat can be dissipated in the earth. When the ambient temperature falls below the ground temperature the process works in reverse. Heat pumps extract heat from the ground and use it to heat the building. Wikipedia
