Vet. geothermal project moves along
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By PATRICK McARDLE Herald Staff - Published: November 29, 2008
BENNINGTON — The $2.3 million first phase of the Vermont Veterans Home geothermal project has been completed and phase two may begin as soon as February, according to the Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services.
Vermont Veterans Home Business Manager Donald Hayward said phase one, which involved the construction of geothermal equipment to bring water in and out of the home and the installation of individual heating control units to common areas, hallways and main offices, was completed about six months ago.
The next phase will install individual heating and cooling control units into patient rooms to replace the single thermostats currently shared by several rooms in a given resident unit. The second phase will allow patients better control and quicker response, said, Richard Frantz, the home's director of environmental services.
"Just to throw a name out there, Ethel could be all the way down the end of one hall and have the only thermostat that runs the whole side of the hall. If Ethel likes it cold and she leaves the window open, the cold air comes in and whacks the thermostat and everybody else cooks. It's not only a huge waste, it doesn't do anything for resident comfort," he said.
Project manager Peter Hack, of the department of buildings and general services, said the geothermal project works by taking ground water from the edge of a manmade trout pond at the home.
The water is drawn from a place low enough so it is heated by the earth to a constant temperature about 50 degrees Fahrenheit and brought into the building to a heat exchanger pump which will either heat or cool water depending on the need.
Excess water will be pumped to basins in the front of the building where the grounds are porous so it can flow back into the ground water.
Inside the building, the heated or cooled water will provide warmth in the winter and cooling in the summer as it's pumped to individual rooms by new pipes and electric heat pumps.
Hack said an advantage to the system is that because it starts with water that's always 50 degrees, it will provide "free" air-conditioning to a building which hasn't had it.
The goals of the project include not only increasing patient comfort but reducing greatly the amount of fossil fuel used by the veterans home, according Frantz.
"(Fossil fuel will provide) hot water throughout the building, laundry, kitchen. … The intent would be to reduce the number of boilers. So that if you have a 250 horsepower boiler and a 275 horsepower boiler, we expect to be able to get rid of the 250," he said.
Frantz said Efficiency Vermont had already found that the home had cut its oil consumption by almost 14 percent from July 2007 to August 2008, compared to the same period a year ago.
Contractors have already bid on the second phase of the geothermal project, according to Hack. The responses have been sent to the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C., for approval because the federal government is supplying 65 percent of the funding through a grant.
Hack said he hoped to have a response from the Veterans Administration by January so the construction on the second phase, which is expected to take about nine months to a year, can begin in February.
In the second phase, the home's domiciliary, a level-three facility which only houses four residents, will be renovated into a 15-bed nursing facility.
To put the heating and cooling control units into individual rooms, patients from the B and C units, which houses about 75 people, will be moved into the renovated domiciliary then returned to their rooms, until all the units are installed.
The final phase involves adding the control units to the A unit and a gut renovation of the north wing, one of the oldest in the veterans home, and installation of the geothermal system.
Contact Patrick McArdle at patrick.mcardle@rutlandherald.com.
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