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This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk, bringing you news and solutions for our changing region.
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The German Society of Pennsylvania, a large, 20,000-square-foot three-story Victorian building built in 1829 that sits near the corner of 6th and Spring Garden streets in Philadelphia, has eliminated its use of natural gas by installing a closed loop geothermal energy system.
“We had a steam heating system for parts of the building,” said Tony Michels, the society’s vice president, who spearheaded the shift to geothermal eight years ago. “We had a hot water system, we had split units, window units, you name it, we had fireplaces. We had everything you can imagine, and we eliminated all of that.”
Michels said that the society got rid of its old systems because they were expensive, inefficient, and added climate-warming pollution to the atmosphere. They switched to geothermal energy to heat and cool the building, including an addition built in 1888 that houses a library, a ballroom and concert hall, and a bar in the basement.
“For us, it was a no-brainer,” Michels said.
Dozens of large buildings and homes throughout the Philadelphia region use geothermal, including the Ronald McDonald House in West Philadelphia, the city’s police academy, and New Jersey’s Stockton State College.
The only visible part of the underground system is half a dozen metal plates in the Society’s parking lot labeled ‘water.’ Beneath the parking lot is the well field for the ground loop system. It was dug up, and the pipes were installed. Today, there’s nothing to be heard but nearby traffic.
The most expensive part of a geothermal installation is the drill rig because the holes need to go deep enough in the ground to reach the bedrock.
In the case of the German Society of Pennsylvania, that was about 400 feet through the Wissahickon schist, until the drill hit granite. The temperature in that part of the earth is a consistent 55 degrees Fahrenheit — think of it like a 55-degree storage facility. Boreholes in vertical loops are lined with high-density polyethylene pipes and filled with water.
“There are two circulation pumps that are circulating the water through all these loops up, down, up, down, up, 23 times,” said Michels.
The water flowing through those vertical looped pipes will be in the ground long enough to reach that steady temperature of about 55 degrees.
While it may be 100 degrees on the surface, that bedrock temperature will remain 55 degrees.
From beneath the parking lot, that 55-degree water flows into the basement to a heat pump in the society’s former vault. The water is used to heat the building in winter — or cool it in the summer.
It’s similar to the way a refrigerator works.
Check out the back of your refrigerator — it’s hot. That’s because it removes the heat from the inside and dumps it into your kitchen. In the winter, your refrigerator doesn’t have to work very hard. When it’s summertime and 90 degrees, your refrigerator works really, really hard.
However, a heat pump operating with 55-degree water running through it no matter the season doesn’t have to work hard in summer or winter. That’s a very happy heat pump that uses very little electricity. And there’s no need for carbon-polluting natural gas to heat the home. The heat pump also does something natural gas can’t. It provides air conditioning as well.
Michels said the whole thing cost about $1.4 million to install at the German Society — but they were going to spend that much anyway to put in a new heating and cooling system to preserve their rare book collection. And their gas bill went down from $1,200 a month to just $63 a month, which covers cooking gas.
Michels said his goal is to convince the National Park Service to install a similar system across the street at the Edgar Allen Poe National Historic Site. He also envisions a networked system that heats and cools the Spring Garden Apartments, located behind the Society’s building and run by the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
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