[A home undergoing ground loop installation for a geothermal pump system]
[A drilling team using drill rods to insert steel casing and prepare the borehole for the ground loop of a geothermal pump system]
Praveen Kuniyil (interview): “We are the first, I would say, we are the harbingers in this area to go in for geothermal. Nobody else – none of our neighbours or friends have done this so they’re all looking up to us to see how the performance is going to be.”
[Geothermal pump system hole in ground]
[The closed loop for geothermal pump system being fed into the ground]
[A worker showing bottom end of the closed loop, made of flexible HDPE plastic, that will be placed in the ground]
Praveen Kuniyil (interview): “As parents, we are leading the path to our kids that we not alone take care of them, we take care of the earth, so that they can have a better life. I would say that all residents in this area should follow (the) suit so that Cortlandt Manor is a liveable place in the next 50 years—even after 50 years it’s a liveable place.”
[Animation showing how geothermal heat pumps work]
[Exteriors of Dandelion’s Westchester headquarters]
[Heat pumps inside Dandelion’s warehouse]
Kathy Hannun (interview): “Geothermal is evolving rapidly. We are seeing it go into much more urban spaces, so right now there are several New York City housing projects that are switching over to geothermal because it’s cost-effective, you know, like, if you’re looking at how much does it cost to operate those buildings over time, that up front cost of putting the ground loops in is totally worth it.”
[Tanks filled with propylene glycol, the non-toxic antifreeze used in Dandelion’s ground loops]
[Banner with the company’s mission statement]
Kathy Hannun (interview): “A typical home using fuel oil in this part of the world, so let’s say New York, but, you know, anywhere around here, might be spending $4,000-5,000 a year on fuel oil and air conditioning bills. That same home will probably be spending about $1,000 a year on electricity with a geothermal system.”
[More of heat pumps inside warehouse]
Kathy Hannun (interview): “There’s an amazing policy landscape helping homeowners afford this technology. So on the federal level, we have the investment tax credit, where the federal government just pays for 30% of the system. A lot of states also have state tax credits. So for example here in New York, there’s a $5,000 state tax credit. And then on top of those tax credits, the utilities are actually providing homeowners with funding to switch.”
[Princeton University professor Forrest Meggers outside his home]
[The head of open loop well for a geothermal pump installed on Meggers’ property]
[Meggers’ radiant floor system that he’s installing for his home’s geothermal energy use]
Forrest Meggers (interview): “A heat pump can move heat from the ground or the air outside into your house, and the most efficient way to heat your house with a heat pump would be to use the ground because in the winter, the ground is much warmer than the air is on a cold winter day. And so we put a well in the ground where water goes down and absorbs the heat out of the ground and goes into your heat pump. The heat pump absorbs that heat that’s at the ground temperature, which is typically, for New Jersey, around 55 degrees, instead of 20 degrees on a cold winter day, and it takes that heat and pumps it up to, say, 120 degrees Fahrenheit.”
[A heat pump in the basement, not hooked up yet]
Forrest Meggers (interview): “The goal is to take advantage of the fact that the soil has a lot of heat capacity, a lot of availability of heat, so when you pull heat out and put it into the air of your house, you can do that for a long time without cooling down all that mass of soil that you have outside. So the cheapest way, if you’re not already excavating a lot of earth, is to drill these long wells because you just have a rig that comes and drills basically a water well and then you put in a pipe that allows you to take advantage of that entire length of 250-500 feet worth of soil as sort of an, quote-unquote, infinite source of heat for your house.”
[Meggers showing additional supplies for his radiant heating/cooling system]
Forrest Meggers (interview): “Every heat pump that you would buy that you would retrofit into your house, into a forced-air system, they almost all have what’s called a reversing valve. And all that does is just switch which side of the heat pump is hot or cold. So, the same machine just sits there and one little valve changes and then the refrigerant just switches which side it goes to first, and that means that the side that was bringing heat into your house is now taking heat out of your house.”
[Pipe from ground well outside connects through the wall of the basement]
[Valves of the existing plumbing system in the basement represent what the completed geothermal/radiant valves will look like]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.