HYDRONICS | EXTENSIVE GEOTHERMAL SYSTEM |
Load sharing, controls — the solution for Florida mansion
36
ago, the local paper announced that it was being built for Oprah Winfrey. It was an easy mistake to make, given the home’s trendy location. The street is famous for its many celebrity homes. Stephen King lives just a few doors down. “All it takes is a rumor for misinformation to catch fire,” said the owner, chuckling. His fortune doesn’t stem from hosting a talk show. Rather, his background is in engineering, and so it was that his professional interests spurred him to pursue the most comprehensive controls systems available for his vacation home. The home sprawls across 30,000
W
square feet, most of which are heated and cooled. A 70,000 gallon indoor swimming pool is located near the center of the mansion. Although the roof over the pool is all
hen a large Tampa Bay mansion was under construction seven years
glass, with a bridge crossing the middle, there’s more to the arrangement than meets the eye. The pool serves as a
giant heat sink and source for the home’s extensive geothermal system. Through load sharing and geothermal technology, the carbon footprint of the gargantuan residence is dramatically reduced. Integrating the entire environmental system is Taco’s new iWorx controls system.
This elegant indoor swimming pool doubles as a 400,000-Btu heat sink for the geothermal system.
noticeably, with oozing rust and decreased operational efficiency. “It’s not uncommon for air-to-air
Out with the (not-so) old Originally constructed seven years
ago, the mansion’s HVAC needs were met by 13 four- and five-ton air-source heat pumps. It wasn’t long before the units had deteriorated
systems to fail in four or five years around here,” said Jay Egg, president of Egg Geothermal Inc, in Tampa. “The salty air just tears apart outdoor equipment.” The owner of the mansion contacted Egg after talking with neighbors who had their systems replaced. With 16 technicians at the original
Tampa location, Egg Geothermal has been doing ground loop installations for the past 20 years. Recently, locations have opened in California and Georgia, managed by Jay’s brothers. The company designs and installs state-of-the-art systems. “We prefer to stick to commercial and high-end residential projects,” said Egg, “Of the 50 systems we installed
The homeowner can operate the system while at home using a control panel (above) or remotely via Taco’s new iWorx system, a web-based building management, monitoring and control system (below).
last year, only a handful were installed in standard homes.” “For this large project, the
homeowner came to us, not only looking for a more efficient system, but also for a system that wouldn’t deteriorate in the harsh atmosphere,” said Egg. Seven years into a 10-year warranty on his existing equipment, the homeowner was even willing to sacrifice three years of warranty to
e Continued on p 38
phc june 2011
www.phcnews.com
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