I have had some feedback on my C02 Reduction Guide. Russell pointed out a subtle flaw with the calculations for compact fluorescent carbon dioxide savings, which means that in some cases switching to energy efficient bulbs can actually increase your carbon dioxide emissions. I haven't fixed the calculations yet... hopefully I will have some time and energy to fix them this week.

Also, through various people at work I was able to find a guy in Kitchener who is in the middle of having a complete geothermal heating and cooling system installed in his house. He was nice enough to invite me over to watch the construction and have a brief discussion about geothermal energy. I learned a few things, but unfortunately I didn't learn the things I really wanted to know, such as how much a geothermal system costs to install, and how much electricity the fan and glycol pump use in a typical year.

Oh well. He also had a solar water heating system installed so I got a chance to look at that. It consists of two solar collectors on the roof, a heat exchanger, a hot water storage tank, and an additional electric "boost" tank that takes over if there is not enough sunlight available to keep the water hot. He claims the booster tank is hardly ever needed... and usually only in the fall when his house is in the shade.

Anyway, it was interesting to watch the drilling. The geothermal system for his house required four 180 foot vertical holes in his front lawn. The ground loop system is pretty compact, considering his front lawn was less than 100 square feet in size! Unfortunately, the drilling crew hit bedrock at 150 feet and had to stop, so to make up the difference they drilled two additional 30 foot holes.

The machine doing the drilling is a million dollar hydraulic drill rig on its maiden voyage. Apparently the first set of drill bits they used were too weak though, and they broke when they hit the bedrock, leaving $15,000 worth of drilling equipment stuck in the first hole. The day I was there they had come back with stronger components and were finishing up the job.

Apologies for the poor picture quality... it was raining outside and I didn't have a great angle to shoot from.

Technical details: This was shot with my Rebel XT + kit lens at 18mm, ISO 400, f/3.5 for 1/60th of a second.