A Coquitlam homeowner and a city business made history this week, becoming the first in North America to install a state-of-the-art "green" snow-melting system at a private home.
Jeevan Thaker of Scotch Pine Avenue watched with pride and, naturally, a little anxiety Wednesday as workers on a mobile drill dug 20-feet down beneath the gravel of his unfinished driveway.
Beside him stood Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart.
"It's great to be on the leading front of this," Thaker said, the two men watching the drill excavate the first of 40 two-storey holes in front of Thaker's home.
But the men hired by Coquitlam's HVAC Systems aren't drilling for oil, they're mining a different kind of energy - geo-thermal heat.
Using 40 'L' shaped steel pipes, reaching 20 feet down into the ground and six feet horizontally across the top of the earth, the pipes will sit upright like bendable straws, sucking up natural heat from deep in the earth and bringing it to the surface to melt snow and ice from just below the concrete of Thaker's driveway.
Unlike buried electrical coils or hot-water systems that do the same job, geo-thermal heat carries with it no operating or maintenance costs and the system will run as long as the core of our planet is warm.
While the heat is free, the system and installation are not.
"This project here, you're looking at between $20,000 to $25,000," said Glen Bereti of HVAC Systems, noting that costs vary depending chiefly on the difficulty of drilling required to reach the subterranean heat.
And while the long black right-angled pipes, or "Geo Hot Rods," look simple enough, their technology is a closely-guarded trade secret under patent by Richmond developer, Free Energy Solutions.
Without giving too much away, Free Energy president and CEO Alf Sanderson told The Tri-City News Wednesday that the "hot rods" are filled with a sand-like "thermal superconductor material" that is completely harmless to the environment if leaked.
HVAC Systems president Paul Aucoin said that in the short time they've teamed up with Free Energy to distribute Geo Hot Rods, they've had requests for trials come in from places as far afield and as frigid as Montreal and Regina, as well as doing trial installations at bus stops and street corners in Richmond and Langley.
And, if Stewart gets his way, we could all soon be walking in warmth and safety on the winter sidewalks of Coquitlam.
"I see applications for this for the city in those dangerous frosty areas in front of seniors' centres, for example," Stewart said. "Imagine if you save just one hip operation. The cost to the health care system of a slip and fall is enormous. If we could take that sidewalk in front of the seniors' centre and for a few thousand make it so from this point forward it won't be frosty...imagine the benefits."
Stewart said he met with HVAC Systems at the Scotch Pine site to discuss the logistics of installing Geo Hot Rods on sidewalks around seniors' and community centres and around busy areas of the city centre.
"I plan to take it back to the city and really contemplate it in those areas," the mayor said.
