What didn't get done over my summer non-vacation

Garden One through the Summer Autumn and Helpers

What didn't get done over my summer non-vacation

Read on to find out why we who push the forward edges of technology have this old technology in this post...

This is the adult version of the "what I did during my summer vacation" paper we all had to write that first week back to school each year. For me, the paper's a bummer because very little of what we intended to get accomplished actually made it to "working" status.

Let's start with the Geothermal heating and cooling. Well, it sounded great on paper even with the price tag at an enormous $38,000. Here's how it was supposed to work: Water was to be drawn from well #1, run through the condensing unit so it could either extract heat or chill from it, then run back down well #2. With the water temperature at a pretty steady 65 degrees (supposedly) the heat pump wouldn't have to work as hard to heat/cool the house, thus using less electricity.

As I said, great in theory. There were problems from the beginning. First, we chose to work with Verde SolAir, whom we chose because our architect recommended them and they were working with AC by Jay/Geoasis who had done a stellar job on our Scottsdale house. It sounded like the perfect combination, but I think Dave Meyers, the owner, may have promised something they'd never done before when he suggested using our wells as a heat source/heat dump. He went away with our paperwork and a check for $19,000 after promising us they'd start work as soon as they had Arizona Public Service's approval, who would be footing half the bill for this. We got the approval letter a few weeks later, then time ticked on. One month, then two passed. After a call to see what was happening, the company's engineer called. Apparently Yavapai county was having problems with the idea of using wells this way. Research needed to be done. More (hot, steamy summer) weeks passed without a word while the old and highly inefficient A/C unit chugged away to the tune of hundreds of dollars a month. Finally, I'd had enough (me being the only one living in the hot house–Ed's final day at work was September 2nd.) We called to cancel the project, well on our way to becoming dissatisfied customers. Just like that the company engineer appeared, did an assessment and disappeared. Time again ticked by. This time we didn't wait months only weeks before we called, ready to cancel the project. The next day the well guys came with Verde SolAir's project engineer. They worked for a week making a muddy mess out of the area behind the pump house (thank heavens this was pre-puppy!), and left their equipment here when they finally went away disappointed. Apparently the wells were poorly drilled into some sort of choking gravel bed (by the way, the same company that originally drilled these wells was the company working on them now). They couldn't get enough water movement in and out the make this system run.

Let me just say that Sam Frey got soaked by every contractor he worked with. I'm not blaming them. I have no doubt that Sam demanded complicated systems and guys who knew better simply shrugged their shoulders and said, "Whatever," then did what he asked because Sam liked paying for things.

This is how they left it

Back to the wells. So, everyone walked away again for more weeks while they scratched their heads. At this point they'd pulled all the piping out of the wells and left it strewn all over the pump house area. Fun. Trashy. I love looking at it.

That's when we get a call from the project engineer. They'd come up with the perfect solution. To the tune of another $10,000 they would dig us two new wells down in the lower field where the water table is at a mere 50 feet not 200 they are in the upper area. Hmm. Now I'm not saying they fabricated anything here, but the numbers just don't add up. There's only a 15 foot drop and a 50 foot distance between the upper area and the lower fields. I know I was terrible in geometry but how can there be a 150 foot difference in the water table. Doesn't water seek a level?

We are not Sam Frey and this was an additional $10,000 going to a bunch of guys who weren't proving themselves either smart enough or reliable enough to get this job done before, say, Christmas. If at all. On top of that, they couldn't put the wells just anywhere. No, they had to be smack in the center of what will become in a year or two a field full of veggies for sale. Moreover, to get said water to the heat pump so it could cool/heat our house required a veritable tangle of pvc and metal piping run on a loud electrical pump (energy savings?) that would need to be running day and night. As if all that mess flying over the ditch where it couldn't be hidden wasn't bad enough that rat's next of technology would be placed right below our bedroom window.

I said forget it. So, for a mere $10,000 or so Ed ordered a DC (direct current) heat pump.

the outdoor half of our new DC heat pump

This may have been the better choice after all because it's amazingly quiet, amazingly efficient and it will run off our someday-to-be-installed photovoltaic panels without transformers being involved.

We all know why America runs off AC (alternating current) right? It's our own homegrown version of Capitalism at work in this story. And, yes I understand that there are some safety advantages to AC, but at the base of it all is Thomas Alva Edison who wanted to make sure his version of electrical appliances and doodads didn't get cut out of the marketplace.

The indoor half of the DC heat pump. See why I was worried about a technology rat's nest?

By the way it still took these guys another month and a half to get that heat pump in place. After announcing themselves awed by this new unit (another first for them) they disappeared, leaving behind two disassembled wells, all the well guy's equipment (we've made repeated calls without getting a response) and our old water heater. We had replaced it with a solar water heater, which is undersized. 50 gallons! What was Ed thinking? That will never do if we actually ever get serious about turning this place into a bed and breakfast.

And then there were the never-appearing microhydro turbines. By mid-summer we'd given up on that newfangled technology. I was bummed for a while. It didn't look like anything green was going to happen here. Then in September Ed had a brainstorm. We were looking to the future when what we needed to be doing was looking

this is the version we'd use

into the past. We needed. . . waterwheels! And now we're on course for that. The energy isn't as efficient but it's a lot more charming.

Finally, there's our nemesis, the pump house. That thing gobbles power like nothing I've ever before seen. Guess what? Every drop of water we use on this property goes through that pump house, even the flood irrigation for the fields. Talk about working harder than necessary. The spring runs above the fields. All it should take for flood irrigation down to the field is a channel from the spring down across the ditch and into the field. Let gravity do the work! And that's where we're headed now, using another ancient technology: aqueducts.