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TESTIMONIALS - Ollie Curme
Geothermal System, Lenox MA

Interview with Ollie Curme, owner of a new Geothermal System installed in 2007:

“My name is Ollie Curme.  My wife and I bought the Dormers, a Berkshire county cottage in 2006. The house was built in 1868 by a civil war Colonel, Richard T. Auchmuty for his bride Ellen Schermerhorn, in the French chateau style.  It was in great condition, but needed an air conditioning system.  We decided to go with a new geothermal system for three reasons:

 

I contacted several geothermal contractors in January of 2007.  Climate Heating and Cooling of Pittsfield was by far the most responsive and knowledgeable firm so in February we signed them up with the requirement that the system be totally finished by June.  Here’s a picture of the house. The exterior and interior walls are solid brick, 1-2 feet thick. The Climate people designed a liquid to liquid system shown below:

Partial System Schematic

 Pumps circulate water from six 500 foot vertical wells drilled into the limestone bedrock.  We circulate liquid through the closed loop wells to provide a source of relatively constant 55 degree water.  The water flows through five three ton Water Furnace heat pumps which cool the water in the summer to 45 degrees and store it in a reservoir of two 119 gallon tanks.  As the zones in each room call for air conditioning, the cold 45 degree water is pumped to fan coil air handlers which blow room air across the coils, cooling it and dehumidifying it.  This system is much simpler than many conventional air conditioning systems which have a compressor for each zone and pump Freon from the condenser outside to the evaporator inside.  Our heat pumps are decoupled from the zones: they cool the cold water tanks which can supply cooling to each individual room rather than each zone; that makes it easier to balance the temperature on a room to room basis.  It also allows the full 15 tons of cooling to be supplied to any area of the house as needed.

 The historic nature of the house provided some challenges; we didn’t want any of the living space changed with air conditioning runs, and it was difficult to snake plumbing through the brick walls.  Climate solved the challenge by putting all the fan coils for the first floor in the basement, blowing up through historically accurate register vents, and putting the fan coils for the second floor in the attic.  All the plumbing for the second floor fan coils went through two chases into two attic spaces below the hipped slate roofs.

To the left is a picture of the small room in the basement in which we put the heat pumps; it looks like a submarine.  We framed the room out with 2x4’s and put special soundproof insulation in it; however, the heat pumps are so quiet that I don’t think we needed to do that.  You can see the two pipes coming from and going to the geo field on the upper left.  The five heat pumps are in the middle, and the two cooling tanks are to the right.  On the ceiling is the fan coil which blows air into the library above it.  Scott Morley, an engineer at Climate, designed the control system to have the heat pumps operate in round robin fashion so that no heat pump works harder than the others.  Each of the first floor, second floor and finished basement areas are around 3000 square feet.  The 15 total tons of cooling capacity are probably overkill for the house; most days we don’t have more than two heat pumps working at any time.  But we wanted to make sure the house would stay cool for parties; we’ve had 150 people over on a hot summer night and everything stayed cool and dry.

Each room has its own thermostat with a temperature display and a slider control to make it warmer or cooler.  Scott Morley designed a computer control program which makes it easy to monitor and control the system from one page of a computer screen (see picture at right).  This screen is available over the internet, so I can access it remotely from anywhere in the world and check temperatures and heat pump activity.  I can also change the setpoints for each floor remotely, to save energy when we’re away, or to cool the house down before we arrive for the weekend.  I’ve also got the ability to monitor the temperature of the geofield wells, but despite the load we put on the system, it stays pretty much 55-65 degrees in the summer and 45-55 degrees in the summer.

 The geothermal system is also the primary heating system during the winter.  We previously had two huge (and expensive) natural gas boilers which heated the house with radiators and provided radiant heat in the floors.  Climate kept the natural gas boilers for radiant heat (which can be switched on or off) and as heating backup in case of heat pump failure or extremely cold days.  As it turned out, the heat pumps were more than adequate to heat the house on the coldest days of the winter.  We’re now planning to take the boilers out and replace them with one heat pump that provides hot water year round, heats the swimming pool, and provides radiant floor heat during the winter.

 Installation went very well.  Climate was the primary contractor and brought in all the plumbers and electricians.  Mike Puntin was my primary contact and gave me weekly status reports and managed and coordinated all the work.  There were numerous changes and adjustments along the way but the house was ready in four months and the project came in exactly on budget.  The most exciting part of the installation was the drilling of the six 500 foot wells.  The picture at right shows the geofield during drilling.  Each well has a closed plastic pipe going down and back up.  The six wells are attached to a supply and return header which is located eight feet underground; well below the frost line.  The headers are attached to supply and return pipes which enter the house through the house foundation into the basement.   The geofield installation tore up the side yard pretty well, but after it was filled in and reseeded, the geofield became completely invisible.

We’re pretty thrilled with the system.  It is hard to cost justify our geothermal system based on operating cost savings; the expected payback for the expensive installation is around 20 years.  However, I’m of the opinion that electricity and natural gas costs will follow oil prices inexorably higher so that in five years time, the geothermal system looks like a bargain.  Even if I’m wrong, and it takes many years to pay back, I still love the system; the house can be as cold or as warm as we want, the impact on our historic house has been negligible, and I can enjoy the peace and quiet of the Berkshires without the racket of air conditioners all summer long.”