Crystalflow - H20 Filtering

Initial output high, but geothermal heating pays for itself in the long run

crystalflow — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 21:32:48 +0000

VIKING – A worn-out oil furnace prompted Stan Marco’s first foray into geothermal heating 30 years ago.Marco decided to make use of abundant well water at his house in St. Andrews, Man., just north of Winnipeg. Since there was already a well in the basement, he decided to have a second well drilled on the property to create an open-loop geothermal system for heating the house.

The well should have been more than 30 metres from the existing well, but Marco had it drilled less than nine metres away. But nature helped make the setup work.

“There was so much water it didn’t make a difference,” said Marco, co-founder of GeoSmart Energy of Cambridge, Ont., a company that supplies equipment for geothermal installations.

Water wells in an open loop system can be used in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia.

The open loop is one of several ways to transfer warmth or cold from the ground to a home or industrial heating or air conditioning system. The other methods circulate a water-antifreeze mixture through green plastic tubing buried in the ground or sunk to the bottom of a lake or large pond.

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EPA to set limits on chemicals in drinking water

crystalflow — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 21:23:41 +0000

(CNN) — The Environmental Protection Agency will set a limit on the amount of the chemical perchlorate, as well as other “toxic contaminants,” in drinking water, it announced Wednesday.

The national regulation on perchlorate will reverse a 2008 decision made by President George W. Bush’s administration, the agency said in a statement. It comes after EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson ordered agency scientists to review “the emerging science of perchlorate.”

“There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny of the standard because, again, we are looking at but one of several precursors that can affect iodine uptake in the thyroid,” Jackson told CNN’s Chief Medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “It’s the first time we’ve ever regulated a chemical not because of what it does directly to you, but because it has an impact on iodine uptake that might affect your child down the road.”

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Funeral Home Cuts Utility Bills in Half With Geothermal

crystalflow — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:06:08 +0000

Monster Commercial learned that Randy Briercliffe, owner of Transcona Funeral Home in Winnipeg, had set up a GeoSmart geothermal system at his business. We contacted him to get some feedback on how the system was working out and how much money he has saved by putting in the system.

Transcona Funeral Home is a large A-Frame building that Randy’s father built. It looks like a church, and is not the most energy-efficient building by design. There is a thirty foot ceiling in the chapel area. With seating for 200 people, with a large crowd the temperature goes up drastically. The geothermal system reacts quickly enough that temperature doesn’t vary by more than 2 degrees. Even in winter, the air conditioning cuts in to keep everyone cool when there is a crowd, something that would have not been possible with their old system.

The Briercliffe’s did a geothermal installation at their house the year after, where Randy says it “made a world of difference”.

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Vast array of drugs in drinking water: AP probe

crystalflow — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:03:31 +0000

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” and might be unduly alarmed.

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