Friday, June 4, 1999

Digging the climate

Graphic: How geothermal systems work

By ERIC BLOM , Staff Writer

Copyright © 1999 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

SCARBOROUGH — Eric Cianchette likes to tell people that water fuels the heating and air conditioning system at his Black Point Inn. No oil, propane, natural gas or electric heaters. Just water.

The former summer-only resort has begun installing a geothermal system that will use groundwater to heat and cool the air. The project is believed to be the largest such installation in the Northeast.

"I think this is the future," said Cianchette, who bought the resort last year and plans to keep it open for at least part of the 1999-2000 winter season for the first time. "It's environmentally better. It's more energy efficient."

Geothermal heating also will be more aesthetically pleasing at the tony resort than conventional air conditioning and heating systems would have been. No need to put holes in the walls of the 121-year-old inn, Cianchette said. And with no boiler to belch fumes, there is no need to build a chimney either.

The inn is not the first building in Maine to go geothermal. During the last several years, a smattering of homes, office buildings, stores and schools have chosen geothermal systems rather than conventional heating.

Still, the Black Point project dwarfs the others in scale. It is three times the size of any other project that Carl Orio, a major regional distributor of geothermal systems, has seen in New England. Orio is president of Water & Energy Systems Corp. in Atkinson, N.H.