How to Heat and Cool an Old School

For nearly a century, neighborhood kids have played baseball on the grass field across the street, while beneath the playground a state of the art geothermal heating and cooling system serves the former school. Below the turf, 70 wells extend more than 250 feet, where the temperature remains 56°F, and recirculating well water is cooled in summer and heated in winter, keeping visitors comfortable and reducing the park's energy costs by half since its installation in 2002. The system uses the acre of playing fields as a large heat exchange area, with miles of pipes carrying water and antifreeze through the field to be warmed or cooled by the surrounding soil, much like a car radiator disperses heat. In summer, warm fluids are pumped into the field to be cooled and then returned to the building, and the process is reversed in winter. Because wells must reach at least 20 feet below the surface to tap a constant temperature unaffected by air changes, the wells here continue an additional 230 feet to compensate for the system's temperature exchange.

Topeka, Kansas · United States