Heating, cooling with Mother Earth

My father always said a well is just a hole in the ground, but the founders of O2Geothermal will tell you that a hole in the ground is an efficient ecological source for heating and cooling your home.
Of course, Jim Oakley and David Ohnesorge aren’t calling their method of cutting your energy bill in half a hole in the ground. The technical term is a direct exchange ground-source heat pump, and Oakley and Ohnesorge have been installing them throughout Missouri since 2008.
They opened their office on Cherry Street downtown after bowing out of the weakening home construction market, which had them traveling the country, calling on customers and building hundreds of houses every year. Oakley, who lives near Ashland, and Ohnesorge, a mid-Missouri native, moved back home to launch O2Geothermal.
The ground-source heat pumps are manufactured by Earthlinked Technologies and are based on what Oakley calls simple physics. Six feet below the surface of the earth in mid-Missouri, the ground stays a steady 57 degrees, even during blistering hot summers and frigid winters. But nobody wants to live 6 feet under — at least no one who doesn’t have fangs and an unusual appetite.
The solution for tapping the cool temperature, Oakley said, is to drill a 3½-inch hole 100 feet deep and insert a looping pipe filled with recirculating refrigerant. The hole is then filled with thermal grout to ensure contact between the pipe and the earth. It takes approximately five such holes in the ground to heat or cool a 5,000-square-foot house.
During the summer, the refrigerant goes into the earth and is cooled. In the winter, it plunges into the earth to be warmed to 57 degrees.
Once the holes are dug and the loop installed, the holes can be covered and camouflaged. The only restriction is to avoid planting a tree near the holes because roots could do damage.
The geothermal system can run $21,000. But with the 30 percent federal tax credits in place until 2016 and 50 percent savings in energy costs, Oakley said homeowners typically could recoup their costs in four years, and the heat pump has a 25-year lifespan.
Wondering if anyone in your neighborhood has holes under the earth that cool their home? The O2geothermal.com website shows pictures of installations on Gary Street, in the Grasslands neighborhood and on Rollins Street.
When Oakley and Ohnesorge started their company, they were installing one unit a month. Recently, their installation rates have doubled per month. They have six workers on the payroll and expect to hire more.
For Oakley, a geothermal heating and air conditioning system is a way to protect homeowners from what he calls the ominous nature of utility bills. “It is a way for consumers to be proactive and take charge of their future,” Oakley said, and free themselves from what will surely be ever-increasing prices for gas and electricity.
Not bad for a hole in the ground.