Geothermal!

Last Monday, the geothermal loops went in. Brad stopped by at lunch and literally couldn't believe his eyes! The installation of geothermal requires an enormous amount of dirt to be moved. Hopefully the investment in this relatively new heating/cooling method will really pay off. Rumor has it our annual heating and cooling costs will be around $300! Gosh, I think we easily surpassed that in two winter months at our house in Cedar Rapids and that was 1/2 the size! If you're interested, visit Climate Master for more information!

So here's how the geothermal loops work:



Summer Cooling - I believe the heat is drawn out of the house and released back into the earth.



Winter Heating - the heat is drawn from the still warm earth and transferred into the house. I've heard it's not a hot heat, so thankfully the wood-burning stove will turn up the toasty factor!

Can you believe the amount of earth that was moved? Everything was all done in one day!

Up close - sorry for the blurry pictures. They are courtesy of Brad's Blackberry camera phone.

This is where the loops go. Precision digging.

I think Brad may have ventured to the bottom of the very deep geothermal valley. To compare, that's a normal size shovel - maybe about 5 1/2 feet tall.

 The geothermal loops peeking out in the soon to be mechanical room.

 The ant hills have been flattened. Hopefully this will settle overtime as we were looking forward to this being nice and flat.

The foundation looks so tiny compared to all the dirt!