Horizontal Directional Drilling: The Solution For Tight Spots
Geothermal heating and cooling systems take advantage of the earth’s unvarying underground temperature and utilize it as a free source of heat for your home in winter or a heat sink to disperse heat extracted from your home during summer. Now, geothermal can also take advantage of new horizontal directional drilling.
A typical geothermal system includes several hundred feet of loops of plastic tubing buried underground to absorb or disperse heat. Some geothermal installations utilize deep holes bored in the ground to install the tubing loops vertically. A horizontal grid configuration, however, has traditionally been the less expensive though far more space-intensive alternative.
A drawback of the large horizontal loop field is existing obstacles like driveways, walkways, sewer pipes and buried utilities. These interfere with the excavation for a horizontal field, often making the more expensive vertical installation the only alternative.
Horizontal directional drilling, a technology developed for installing underground utilities, employs a long, flexible drill bit to bore horizontally underground beneath obstructions. There is no surface excavation except for the entry and exit points of the drill. The drill bit is equipped with a radiosonde sensor that transmits data such as the direction and depth of the drill bit to the operator on the surface, allowing him to guide the drill underground with great accuracy. An initial small pilot hole is drilled the length of the bore path, then the bore is enlarged by successive passes with a reamer.
For a geothermal application, a number of horizontal directional bores can be made to form the lanes of the underground grid. The tubing loops are then installed in the bores. The cost of a horizontal directional drilling geothermal installation is roughly the same as a vertical installation, but it is more advantageous for areas with deep rock formations or other underground obstructions that make vertical drilling problematic.
Symbiont Services Corp. is the Florida Suncoast’s premier source for geothermal heating and cooling. Call us for more information about creative technology like horizontal directional drilling to fit clean, efficient geothermal into your life.
Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
Symbiont Service Corp. serves Englewood, Florida and the surrounding areas. Visit our website to see our special offers and get started today!
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