New Hampshire’s Geothermal Think Tank Takes on an Extraordinary Job

Carl Orio spearheaded the development of the standing-column geo-exchange well almost 35 years ago.  Today the company he founded in 1981, Hampstead, NH-based Water Energy Distributors, Inc., is recognized as a global leader in geothermal design and distribution.   The standing column well is now regarded as offering one the highest efficiencies of any geo-exchange system.

Three years after Carl Orio incorporated Water Energy Systems, he brought his daughter Christina into the business as general manager.  In 2000, she became president of the firm, changing the name to Water Energy Distributors, Inc.  All along, the focus has been the sale and design of sustainable, renewable energy systems.

No job too big

In 2005, Water Energy Distributors was hired as a subcontractor by the acclaimed engineering firm, McFarland-Johnson, to design an all-geothermal mechanical system for the Merrimack County Nursing Home (MCNH), in Boscawen, NH.  The system – installed in stages during the past several years as the facility went through various construction stages – incorporates 16 standing column wells and 326 ClimateMaster water-to-air heat pumps for a total of 615 tons of capacity.

Many different subcontractors came together to complete the county-owned, state of the art 235,000 square-foot, 296-bed facility with a staff of 425.

“The first order of business was to closely study the area’s hydrogeologic properties to determine the best location for the well field.  Water Energy was instrumental in determining optimum well spacing and number of wells within the identified area having the best hydrogeologic parameters,” said Fred Mock, Vice President of Binghamton, NY based McFarland-Johnson.

“Based on the heat load, we recommended 16, 10-8-6 wells, each 1500 feet deep,” said Orio.  The term “10-8-6” stands for a ten inch casing sealed into the bedrock, an eight inch rock bore, and a six inch sleeve and pump.  Each submersible pump has a 10 hp motor to push water to the building’s mechanical room, and from there to all the heat pumps.

All 16 wells are located in the nursing home’s parking lot.  Split up into two well fields, eight wells are located in the upper parking lot, and eight in the lower, with the farthest well being 850 feet from point of entry into the building.  Each eight-well field is piped to its own supply and return manifold.  The caps are protected by manhole covers, and can be found in the green spaces between parking areas.  Amherst, NH based Skillings and Sons was the driller contracted for the MCNH job.  The company had two of their four drilling rigs on the job, operated by five employees.

“Each well took us about six days to drill,” said President Roger Skillings.  Drilling an eight inch hole through 1500 feet of solid granite is no small task; it was a blessing in disguise, though.  According to Skillings, the number-one enemy of a healthy standing column well is soft rock that cracks, collapses and caves in.

“The first thing we do at any job that is to include a standing column well, is to drill a test well,” explained Skillings.  “If the rock hardness, density, and the quality of the water are all desirable, that test well becomes the first well on the field.”  At this site, we found some of the best, mineral-free water we’ve ever seen, and the rock was also very stable.”  The average water temperature across all the wells was 52 degrees.

Once inside

“Each of the eight-well supply and return manifolds feed well water to a series of risers to the upper floors,” explained Orio.  “There are two of the big manifolds; each field feeds half of the building.  We generally prefer tohave no more than ten wells, or 300-400 tons, on a given field.  At MCNH, there’s a nominal 310 tons on each field.”

According to Orio, limiting the fields to ten wells is for ease of balancing.  The well heads should be kept at the same elevation across the field.  Since MCNH rests on a hill, the two fields are roughly five feet apart in elevation from each other.

As customary for all standing column well systems, no circulators are used; there aren’t even any flow centers on the ClimateMaster units.

Pressure at the mechanical room supply manifolds are maintained by the VFD-controlled submersible pumps which operate in parallel.  Pressure in the manifold that serves the upper field is kept at 52 psi, and at 55 psi for the lower manifold, insuring 25 psi at the furthest, 4th floor heat pump.  “You take the furthest well and the most distant heat pump, and that gives you the requirement for sizing the submersible pumps,” said Orio.

“Two key things come together when determining system head pressure,” said Orio.  “The design engineer determines the TDH (total dynamic head) in the building, and the geothermal engineer determines the TDH from the well to the manifold.”  Together, these provide the pressure drop to the highest heat pump in the building at peak flow.

Suspended above drop-ceiling tiles are either three or four-ton ClimateMaster TS units with copper-nickel heat exchangers.  The majority of the units serve two bedroom areas.  A big advantage in having many small units – as opposed to a large, central unit for each floor – is sanitation.  With the smaller systems, air movement is limited to two rooms, greatly reducing the threat posed by airborne pathogens.“I was skeptical at first,” said Sid McDonald, director of facilities at MCNH.  “Thebugs got worked out the first year the system was in, and ever since then, it’s has been phenomenal.  I was really impressed with everyone involved and the technical solutions that were offered.”

It’s a BTU gusher; a “geo dream”

According to Carl Orio, most standing column wells are designed to bleed off 10 percent of the water used.  In the case of MCNH, the wells were designed to bleed off only five percent of the geo-exchange water.  This was done to prevent water from overfilling the property’s detention pond which would then put it on a downhill course and into Merrimack River, requiring another, higher level of environmental permitting.

Yet aquifer flow under MCNH was much better than expected.  The flow of water in the wells is so steady, easily maintaining design temp despite the influence of system geo-exchange, that there’s no need even for a five percent bleed-off of water.

But it gets better than that.  So rich and steady is the supply of waterborne BTUs that, for eight or nine months of the year, only 10 of the 16 wells are used.  So, just to keep things equal in the wells, BTUs are tapped from different wells on a rotating basis year-round.

“It’s really amazing how well the system has worked out, almost like a dream,” said Skillings.  “By rotating wells, MCNH not only saves even more electric, but conserves pump life and the aquifers as well.”

The system is a great example of what can be achieved when several outstanding companies come together for one project.