Ridgefield Press, The (CT)
August 14, 2008
Geothermal looks better as heating oil prices rise
Author: Macklin Reid; Press Staff
Section: News
Page: 1A, 25A

With energy prices looking like they'll go up forever, geothermal heating and cooling seemed like a good home investment to Jack Morrisroe. He had some trouble convincing his wife, Mary.
"She thought I was crazy. We're too old - you'll never get your money back.' She wanted nothing to do with it. I tried to show her facts and figures," said Mr. Morrisroe, 81.

"I think she's beginning to come around," he added.

How could she resist?

A retired telephone company foreman, Mr. Morrisroe has been using solar panels on the roof to make hot water at his Dowling Drive home since the Carter administration.

Geothermal made sense to him. "The way I feel is, I don't see any end to the way oil is going up," he said. "I think oil is going to continue to go up, and I think the further oil goes up the more precious the geothermal system becomes."

The appeal goes beyond money. "I'm kind of leaning toward going green and telling the Arabs they can drink their oil because I don't want it any more," Mr. Morrisroe said.

From late spring through midsummer, the geothermal system was a project in the works, and it is now in operation at the Morrisroe home. Heating oil prices are down a bit from a peak in mid-July, but still in the $4-per-gallon range.
Mr. Morrisroe, who seems firmly in the "measure twice, cut once" tradition, has sheets of projections he's done on the repayment over time of the geothermal system's installation cost.

"The loan, I borrowed $26,000 for seven years at 5.5%," he said.

"The higher oil goes, the quicker the payback is."

The seven-year loan has a carrying cost of $4,483 per year and a repayment total of $31,381 with the interest.

He uses roughly 1,000 gallons of heating oil a year, and has calculated in costs for annual cleaning of the oil burner, electricity costs for air conditioning and running the geothermal system's heat pump.

In one projection scenario, heating oil costs were taken from a starting point of $4.25 a gallon - right about what they are now - with an assumed increase of 10% a year into the future, which is about half the rate oil has gone up the last two years. He also assumed a 10% annual increase in electricity prices.

Even in the first year, he figures his cost running the geo-thermal system - which has no oil burner but does use electricity - and repaying the loan is only $437 more than he would have paid burning oil at $4.25 a gallon.

The second year, with oil and electricity 10% higher, his geo-thermal cost - operations, plus loan payment - is only $31 more than oil burning.

By the third year, his annual costs are $414 less than burning oil.

In the eighth year, when the loan is paid off, he projects cost savings of $7,990 a year.

Another set of calculations assumed a heating oil price of $3.96 a gallon in the first year, increasing 10% annually. With those assumptions, he calculates the geothermal system will start saving him money in the fourth year.

"In 10 years, this system will save $27,894 over what oil would cost," he said, based on the $3.96 starting price.

Mr. Morrisroe notes that his house was already outfitted with the ductwork for the air flow systems - the installation cost would be considerably higher if ductwork had to be put in.

"My house was built from scratch for hot air heat and air conditioning. It's got outlets and returns in every room," he said.

The payoff would be further into the future for a house with hot water or steam heat that had to be retrofitted with the air ducts. For houses with forced air heat or central air conditioning, or for new construction, the numbers work much better.

"If you're building a new house it's a big mistake not to put in geothermal, I feel," Mr. Morrisroe said.

"I figured if I stay with oil it'll cost me $25,000 over the next five years. For $25,000 I can have the geothermal system put in, and my costs will be far less for all my heat, all my air conditioning, and some of my hot water," he said.

And, environmentalism really is an idea he embraces.

"Going green? I feel great about that," he said. "It amazes me that the U.S. government hasn't offered more and better incentives to induce people like me to do this kind of thing.

"Back in '79 they offered high incentives for things like solar hot water heaters, so I put one in. I took advantage of their incentive, and I've been saving money on making hot water since 1979."

Geothermal systems don't produce heat, they move it.

Much of the energy that reaches Earth from the sun is absorbed into the ground - nearly 47%, according to the manufacturer of the WaterFurnace used in Mr. Morrisroe's geothermal system. The ground's temperature varies much less than air temperature - it's warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer. A geo-thermal system sends a loop of pipes into the ground to absorb heat and deliver it to the house in winter, or carry out excess heat and disperse it into the ground in summer.

A heat pump system similar to that in a refrigerator - compressors and condensers - takes advantage of the physical properties of a fluid/gas gaining temperature as it condenses and losing temperature as it evaporates. As with a refrigerator, the heat pump can be used to change and regulate the temperature inside a closed area - the refrigerator, or the house - by repeated exchanges with the outside heat source or, when cooling, heat sink.

"The Earth is like a big piggy bank," Mr. Morrisroe said. "You take heat out of the house in the summer and stash it in the ground. In the winter, go back and get it and put it back in the house."

Mr. Morrisroe's system was put in by two contractors: Seguin Heating and Air Conditioning of New Milford designed and installed the geothermal central heating and air conditioning system. And John Craig of Welltek in Southbury dug the geothermal well.

Mr. Morrisroe had investigated putting a geothermal system in before.

"I tried to do this 25 years ago," he said. "I talked to the Town of Ridgefield and they said we're not going to let you do it. They said your system has got Freon in it - if it leaks, your neighbor will be drinking it."

Today, that's not a problem "You're sending water mixed with propylene glycol, which is actually edible, so if it leaked into the ground it doesn't cause any problems, but it's an anti-freeze," he said.

Mary Morrisroe admits to having been skeptical.

"I knew he'd done a lot of work and investigation on what he should do and I got involved in visiting some people who had the geothermal," she said. "Very honestly, I thought: At our age, why bother?"

But she is impressed with the results.

"It's up, it's running and it's working beautifully. We're getting great air conditioning," she said.

"We've had it up since sometime in the end of June. We managed to hit some of those wonderful heat waves this year."

Jack Morrisroe watches as Joe Conway of Seguin Heating and Air Conditioning from New Milford installs piping for his geo-thermal heating system into the basement of Mr. Morrisroe's house.

Memo:
This is part of a series on using - and saving money on - energy.
Copyright, 2008, The Ridgefield Press
Record Number: 12297B6648804500