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Drilling Work on Kirkwood Campus

By March 11, 2011January 11th, 2019No Comments

Saving more money than expected

For those who have wondered about the tall blue tower with the American flag on top between Linn and Jones Hall this week, here’s the scoop:

A crew is drilling a test geothermal well, part of the preliminaries for the Linn Hall renovation set to begin later this year. Tom Kaldenberg in Facilities tells us the work holds big cost-saving potential for the college.

“The project is aimed at greatly lowering the number of wells needed for the geothermal heating/cooling work. We plan to lower the number of wells from around 250 down to four, through a new technology called ‘pump and re-inject,'” Kaldenberg said.

Instead of the many narrow wells, the new plan will use four wells–two for the pump aspect, two more for the re-injection. The wells are redundant, so if one fails the backups continue to operate Linn Hall’s system.

“The really nice news is a cost savings of more than $300,000 for the project,” added Kaldenberg.