The soybeans were harvested from the front field on Tuesday, and the rest of this week was spent digging the trenches for the geothermal heating. Several people from the community wanted to know what was going on when they drove by and saw the fields being completely dug up.
The excavator dug a trench out from the headhouse about 20 feet and then up toward the road about 130 feet. The trenches are about 5 1/2 - 6 feet deep. When completed, there will be a total of eightteen trenches coming off the main one on one side and twenty-two of them coming off the other side. These branches are each 120 feet in length. Picture a very large tree.
Once each trench was dug, we took forty 800-foot-long flexible conduit and made giant slinkeys, tying the loops together with plastic zip ties, laying the slinkeys in the bottom of the trenches. Eventually, all the slinkeys will be connected to the heat pumps in the greenhouse.
At more than five feet below ground, these slinkeys will carry liquid antifreeze, taking heat from the ground (which at this depth is a constant 55 degrees). This reduces our dependency on propane, thereby reducing our carbon footprint.
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