It’s no secret that lightning can harm computers and electronics.  But practical advice for protecting computers from lightning is actually obscured by myths.  So, I thought I would shed some myths regarding lighting protection.  Once done, the door opens up for large scale handlings for lighting that don’t necessarily cost that much.

MYTH:  I CAN TELL IF LIGHTING HAS DAMAGED MY ELECTRONICS IF THERE ARE HUGE SPARKS AND FIRES.   Clearly, that would be a good indicator of lighting, but electronics can be damaged by much smaller current surges.  You may not have any clue your electronics have been struck other than strange behavior.  In a world where viruses and software conflicts pop up unexpectedly, it can take a while to discover that some of your electronics strange behavior is actually damaged components.

MYTH: IF MY BUILDING HAS A GROUND, THAT COVERS THE SUBJECT OF LIGHTING PROTECTION.  Actually, it’s a start.  Ben Franklin was the one who discovered that grounding wooden sailing ships kept them from being destroyed at sea from lighting.  But there are many ways lighting has to get at computers and grounding is only a part of the protection needed.  Worse yet, while building codes require a substantial ground on the main electrical power system;  Codes do not require adequate grounding on telephone and cable systems.  I was troubled to find the internet installation team grounding the internet satellite dish to the hose bibb.  When I pointed out that the hose bibb was attached to plastic pipe in typical Florida buildings, the technician shrugged and said he has not materials or knowledge to do anything else.  Another technician tried to dismiss the subject by saying building departments forbid satellite installers from installing proper grounding rods (???).  To get adequate lighting protection, add 8 foot copper grounding rods and thick grounding wire to where your telephone and cable enter the building.  Ground rods offer a quick,safe, and convenient path for electricity surges to follow but electricity is opportunistic.  If the ground wire is 10o times easier a path to follow that the rest of the electrical system, most of the electricity will follow that and a small fraction (say 1/10o) will follow the more restricted path.

MYTH:  IF I HAVE A SURGE ARRESTOR THAT I PLUG MY COMPUTER INTO, THAT COVERS MY COMPUTER.  First of all, electrical power is only one path into the computer.  Internet is the other.  Unless the internet modem is protected by the power strip, consider the back door wide open.  Secondly, a surge arrestor is designed to blow when a sufficiently large current tries to pass through it.  If you break that action down into tiny steps-step one is a large overdose of electricity passing through the surge arrestor and heating  it up (typically melting fuses). Step two is the arrestor breaks the continuity of the electrical path.  So, even when a surge arrestor works, a short blast can pass through.

MYTH: IF I RENT; THERE ISN’T ANYTHING I CAN DO ABOUT PROTECTING THE MAIN ENTRANCES FOR POWER AND COMMUNICATIONS.    It is worth checking into how your rented building is protected centrally.  If you don’t like what you see, it is a mutual interest of the landlord to protect the building.  Most utility companies will gladly install surge arrestors on the power side.  It doesn’t cost too much ($500 tops) and I hear some utility companies install them for you for free.  Others will wrap the cost into the utility bills for a few months for you.  This is chump change compared to replacing your electronics.

MYTH: ONE SURGE ARRESTOR IS ALL I NEED ON EACH PATH (ONE FOR POWER, ONE FOR INTERNET).  One is good.  I would count a good ground as a second, but it doesn’t have to stop there, especially since surge arrestors are so inexpensive in the first place.   It is not difficult to increase to three or four levels of protection.  I bought surge arrestors for the internet and cable TV for 60$ each.  They simply screwed into the cables.  I bought a surge arrestor for the main electrical panel for $100 or so.  I had to pay a licensed electrician to install it, but while he was at it, $50 bought a surge arrestor for the meter. ( A modest cost increase).  It is not expensive to come out of your main surge protector (mine is an APC battery backup/power conditioner) and then plug those cables into a cheap surge arrestor strip. Most companies have them lying around anyway.  Same for the internet. I just bought a surge strip with cable plug-ins for $40 and it has a guaranty on it’s surge arrestance.   The logic that I am following here  is that a huge strike can pass some electricity in the process of tripping the main surge arrestor.  A downstream surge arrestor can be smaller in capacity and take up the excess.  I have even heard that a large scale surge arrestors are sometimes designed to trip during large current surges, but small surges can pass through without tripping them.  Here is another benefit of the second arrestor.

MYTH: LIGHTING ONLY TRAVELS FROM THE SKY TO THE GROUND.  I have some first hand experience with this one.  Lighting can travel across the ground once it hits.  I have heard it can travel a mile or more.  I suppose if the ground is real wet, that would make the horizontal movement of lighting even easier.  In my case, I was mountain climbing in Colorado when an afternoon thunderstorm rolled in.  We were most of the way up a rock face when we realized that lighting might be coming at us.  By the time it was my turn to rappel down off of the rock, it was raining and lighting was all around.  Knowing that a wet rope is a conductor and the rope was wrapped around my waist made the 2 minute rappel seem like an eternity until I was safely free from the rope.  Once done, we very quickly scrambled down the mountain through the trees while the lighting continued.  I had paused to look up at my climbing team mates coming down the mountain when I saw a log near me jiggle.  Next an electric bolt jumped out of the log,  split into 6 bolts of electricity, and went into the wet metal eyelets of my boots.  I wasn’t hurt by it, but I learned an important lesson none the less.  So, lighting traveling across the ground can actually enter the building through the ground wires and any other path that presents itself.  That is another reason why I was saying earlier that a ground is a good start but I would not rely on just a ground for lighting protection.

MYTH: THE MODEM HAS BUILT IT LIGHTING PROTECTION.  Wishful thinking.  These devices have to be cost competitive in a brisk market place.  Not every  part of this huge country of ours  is concerned that much about lighting so why price your device out of the market place by adding things that the other modems don’t have?

MYTH: THE CABLE AND TELEPHONE COMPANY NECESSARILY TAKE CARE OF LIGHTING PROTECTION SO I DON’T NEED TO.  Maybe some do, but I do not recommend assuming this is the case.  Imagine a large commercial building with $250,000 worth of HVAC controls running the air conditioning system. Now imagine the phone modem being an entrance point for lighting and wrecking all of the digital controllers in the building.   A 100$ surge arrestor can save a huge amount of grief later on.  Imagine an office with 20 computers having to replace them all, and the data on them….versus a couple of hundred dollars spent in the right place at the right time.

Thanks for tuning in again.  Until Later!

These booklets are part of a long term commitment by ASHRAE to help create a world where buildings use dramatically less energy.  The first stage was to release booklets that describe step by step information on how to save 30% on energy buildings being designed.  I had mentioned these booklets on my home page.

The new stage is 50% energy reductions.  So far one free  booklet is available in this category (for small offices).  By the time you read this, there will probably more types of buildings available.

In the future, expect guidelines for even higher energy targets.  By the time 100% energy savings is a reality-buildings will likely need to be linked together with surrounding buildings in terms of energy features (like co-generation, waste heat recovery etc).

ASHRAE (the American Society of Heating and Refrigeration Engineers) is in the process of releasing booklets free to all interested people with practical step by step information that makes a building save a projected 50% of the energy bills of conventional buildings being designed.  To keep things simple, ASHRAE dedicates each booklet to a specific type of building: small offices/retail/warehouses/motels/educational/smaller healthcare facilities.

These booklets are part of a long term commitment by ASHRAE to help create a world where buildings use dramatically less energy.  The first stage was to release booklets that describe step by step information on how to save 30% on energy buildings being designed.  I had mentioned these booklets on my home page.

The new stage is 50% energy reductions.  So far one booklet is available in this category (for small offices).

In the future, expect guidelines for even higher energy targets.  By the time 100% energy savings is a reality-buildings will likely need to be linked together with surrounding buildings in terms of energy features (like cogeneration, solid waste converters, geothermal,waste heat recovery etc).  By surrounding buildings cooperating with each other two new possibilities open up. For example-  expensive power generation options become more affordable when they are shared by 3 buildings.  Another example is to have possibilities open up for sending otherwise wasted energies to surrounding buildings that have the ability to use it.  Let’s say one building can generate more rainwater than it can use and another building can generate solar photovoltaic on weekends but needs none on the weekends.
http://www.ashrae.org/publications/page/aedg50pct
http://aedg.ashrae.org/Default.aspxhttp://aedg.ashrae.org/Default.aspx

If you would like a PDF copy of one of these energy guideline documents with the architectural or electrical items of interest highlighted-contact me through the “contact us” page on this website!

2. What influenced your decision to hire them?

3. How do you feel about engineers?

4.  Are there any services you wish engineers offered?

5.  Are you a building owner?

6.  Are you an architect?

7.  Are you a contractor?

Thank you for participating in this survey.  This survey has been a worthwhile experience so far.   I was fascinated how the survey results I have gotten so far were different that I would have guessed.

Energy Transfer at earth's surface (from NASA)

This illustration was produced to help explain global warming.  Notice anything strange?  As a mechanical engineer,  we were taught in engineering school to define boundaries of whatever we are studying and include all energy within the boundary and crossing the boundary.  So I am calling attention to energy transfer from the center of the earth the the earth’s crust. It is not represented in the above illustration.  I have not found any information on this subject that a non-astro-geophysicist type like me could understand, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. If any readers out there can enlighten us on the core of the earth’s exact contribution to soil temperatures, please do.

Anyway, the core of the earth is molten hot-it must be cooling through time.  This means the earth’s crust transfers it’s energy somehow into outer space.    Once again, exactly how this ties in with global warming is beyond me but I hope that some of the readers can enlighten me on this a little bit- for the sake of global warming and geothermal engineering.

From the graph below, it is easy to see that the ground in Florida takes in a lot of heat during the summer.  If the Gulf of Mexico water warms up to above 85F in the summer, it is simple to see that the ground in Florida also heats up seasonally too.  For geothermal in Florida, this means that the heat pump heating system is fighting against nature to pull heat out of the ground in winter and fighting nature all summer long to push off it’s heat from the already warmed up soil.

So the point in Florida is– why fight nature when Florida is blessed with an enormous aquifer below it that keeps a stable temperature in the mid/lower 70F’s all year long?  If you could ask an air conditioner if it would rather reject heat to 76 degree water, 95 degree air, or say 82 degree soil-it will tell you 76 degree water every time!

If you ask a geothermal heat pump if it would rather suck heat from 76 degree water, 45 degree air, or say 66 degree soil- it would tell you 76 degree water every time!

Florida is so fortunate to have this unique geological asset-the huge aquifers.   I believe that despite all the poorly designed and poorly installed geothermal systems out there in Florida-geothermal has a brilliant future.  The future is particularly bright for buildings which get used 24/7 and/or for buildings with larger or steady heating demands associated with them.

The colored map below shows the size and extent of the Florida aquifer.   If you look closely, you will see the outline of Florida in the large blue area.

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Guy Van Meulebrouck PE

FIRE ANTS IN FLORIDA

Florida has an abundance of pests.  Fire ants are a nuisance around buildings.  Actually, I got bit by fire ants a few times in my bed, sleeping at night!   The ants had gotten inside the house and considered the area below the carpet as a freeway system all around the house.  At any given time, I can find about a dozen fire ant nests around my house and inside my garden.  One has to admire their persistence.

Did you know fire ants can communicate during the defense of their nests in such a way that all the ants bite at the same time?  I found this out the hard way when I was brand new to Florida and didn’t know what fire ants were.

Out of curiosity,  I have torn apart fire ant nests and found as many as 10 queen ants in the nest.  I dug one nest out and found it was about 28″ deep.  I have never been able to eliminate fire ants for any length of time, but I have learned ways to keep them in check.

I have heard a variety of natural remedies for the pesty fire ants in Florida.  Here is a discussion of folk remedies I have heard about and my degrees of success with them.  By all means, please feel free to communicate your remedies and experiences!

GETTING RID OF FIRE ANTS

1.  Soda Water. Actually worked!  I’d say about 65% of the time- the carbon dioxide gassed the little buggers and took out the nest.  I would recommend cooling the soda water in the refrigerator so the carbon dioxide gas is cooler and settles into the lower places, like the deep reaches of the nests.  As soon as one dumps the soda water on the nest, put something over the nest to trap the CO2 gas around the nest-like the top from a pizza box, a wet page of newpaper, etc.

2.  Quick Grits.  It took me a few years to try this one out.  It sounded crazy.   Turns out it worked about 35% of the time. One leaves traces of quick grits on the ground about 8″ away from the nest.  The ants take the grits into the nest as food.  They feed the grits to the queens.  The grits are dry and expand in their stomachs and rip their little bellies open.  Bon appetit and good riddance!

3.  Gasoline. Of course this works.  Gasoline is hardly good for your lawn or garden.  If you have a well, gasoline is nothing you want percolating into the well either.  BUT, if you light it on fire, it leaves behind carbon and dead ants.  Obvious warning, if you try this and do something stupid (like lighting the gas while there is spilled gas on your hand, or keeping the gas can next to the burn area)–then you will be amount the casualties.  I found that the fumes from the gas were actually more destructive to the ants  than the heat- so I recommend letting the gas sit for a few minutes before lighting it.  I only found about an 80% success rate with this one.

4.  Flooding:  this won’t kill the ants but it sure puts the idea of moving the nest into their busy little minds.  I have had about a 65% success with this one.

5.  Harrasment:  smashing the pile with sticks really gets ‘em going.  It turns out ants ( like humans) appreciate peace, quiet and security in their home.  Getting disturbed can convince them to move.  This treatment won’t kill the nest, only convince them to move somewhere else.  I see about a 60% success with this.  I reserve this treatment to get them out of the garden (near edible plants) to somewhere where I can get at them with more powerful measures.

6.  Third party technique.  This method is interesting.  One takes a shovel and sprays insect repellent around the handle of the shovel to keep the ants from crawling up the shovel and biting the  you.  Once done, you take small shovel full of one ant nest and walk it over to the some other nest.  Dump the ants onto the foreign nest and viola!  The two nests are now are war with each other.  Just for the heck of it, I then take a small shovel full of that nest and walk it over to the other nest and dump it there.  There is something satisfying about seeing the two nest going to war with each other and finally having something useful to bite instead of me and my dogs.  I would guess about a 70% success rate with this one.  The larger the nest the lower the success rate. The larger ant piles didn’t seem to mind the commotion too much since they had so many reserves of ants on board to fight future battles.

DEALING WITH ANT BITES

Naturally, anyone who lives around fire ants gets bit.  I learned  a great natural remedy for the sting of the fire ant bites.  I put Castor Oil on the bite.  Castor Oil seems to draw all types of toxins out of skin.  As soon as you feel some releif, that means the toxins have worked out through the skin and should get washed off with soap and water.  I have had good luck with this for spider bites too.  In extreme cases (like brown recluse) I put wool and heat over the Castor Oil to help it draw out better.

Anyway, hope this helps other Floridians keep their fire ants under control without having to use poisons all the time.

Once again, let me know about your insect control experiences!  I wouldn’t have learned any of these techniques without neighbors offering their experiences.

Sometimes well pumps get selected because the same exact pump got used successfully on another project. It would be a coincidence if the same pump conditions existed on two different projects. Since flow measurement is not always provided for on systems that aren’t engineered, it is difficult to say if “working right” means doing the job without wasting energy.

Once an owner asked me to use a pump he found on the internet and liked.  The pump  wasn’t capable of sucking water high enough out of the ground to work in the Florida aquifer application.  The owner reported that the well flowed artesian so it didn’t matter.  Conferring with the well driller confirmed that the artesian effect of the well was only seasonal.  This meant the pump would only be able to draw water out of the well during rainy season.

Well pumps are the heart of the system.  Oversizing a geothermal well pump “just to be sure” defeats the purpose of geothermal, which is to save energy.  For example, the power a pump consumes increases with the increase of head in the system.  Consider a pump that puts out 10% more head than needed.  The pump motor would consume 15% more energy.  If the geothermal pump runs 24/7, that is a lot of wasted energy. If that 15% more energy is the reason a pump motor is say 5 horse instead of 3 horse- the owner could wind up paying $1,300 per year in wasted energy.  Increasing pump size can increase electrical size and both of these impact the first cost and payback of the system.  In cases like this there is more than just energy cost and payback involved in improperly selecting a pump.

I have seen geothermal well  pumps selected that worked successfully but had required extra head solely because the pump was the same diameter as the well.  If you think about how a submersible well pump is constructed, the well water must flow past the motor to get into the pump itself.  I calculated the velocity of the water passing between the motor and the side of the well.  It was high enough to cause abrasion on the well wall and add significantly to the pump head.

Sometimes people are led into a sense of false security because the geothermal pump has a variable speed drive on it.  True the drive can be adjusted to various conditions and cover a lot of flow possibilities, but did you know that the head that the pump puts out drops when the variable speed drive slows the flow down?  There is often a cutoff point where the head cannot safely drop any lower and have the system work right. There is also a point where reducing the flow into a heat exchanger can cause a dramatic loss of capacity because the water is traveling too slowly through the heat exchanger.

On one occasion, I saw two different geothermal systems with variable speed drives on each system feed into a common discharge well.  Engineers are trained to know why two parallel systems cannot always seamlessly tie together when each system has it’s own variable speed drive.

Most recently, my own domestic well was designed and installed by the well driller.  The chlorine injection pump turned out to be oversized by a factor of 4 or 5.  The pump has a variable flow dial on it but it is incapable of operating in the range needed.  In order to get proper performance out of the over-sized pump we need to continually dilute the chlorine tank and test and monitor it carefully each week.  This type of pump costs the same no matter what size one buys so putting the the correct size pump wouldn’t cost anything additional.

The bottom line is that a certain amount of engineering is required to properly select a geothermal pump and each application is different in some way or another.  The money spent to engineer a system can pay for itself sometime in just the service calls that get avoided later.

Guy Van Meulebrouck PE

10947 US Highway 98 North

an energy star partner

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Engineers solve specific problems for people by combining science, business, and economics.  Dictionaries don’t even know this.  Many college graduates with engineering degrees are left to figure this out for themselves.  Now you know it!

Building engineers work with architects and contractors in order to help create the environments that life takes place in.   As much as people love the outdoors; most of life takes place indoors.  Children are conceived indoors (for the most part), children are born indoors, children are schooled indoors, we eat and sleep indoors, etc, etc.  You are probably indoors right now reading this.  So, creating the environment that life takes place in is a pretty big deal.  I consider it an honorable, rewarding,  and valuble endeavor.

What do consulting engineers do for you?  We sell our time to you.  It takes time to prepare blueprints, specifications etc.  Something that comes packaged with our time is experience.  Someone who has spent 4 or 5 years studying engineering and 4 years interning as an engineer is actually just starting out.  The collective experience along the way all works for you.  What to do, what not to do.  Each hour of my time I offer you benefits not only from my personal experiences of what to do and what never to do again; but the experience from working alongside teams of engineers each learning lessons about what to do again and what not to do again.

Each time I get called into solve a problem for someone, the lessons learned come along for your benefit.

Did I mention that engineers like to read?  We wouldn’t get through engineering school any other way.  After college we find lots of geeky stuff to read:  manufacturer’s literature, code books, engineering textbooks, professional magazines etc. Each of these adds to the experience we can offer you.  Getting an engineering degree proves to the world we are capable of taking on long and complex commitments and completing them.

Professionals don’t gaurantee results, but they hedge your odds for success well beyond chance and random learning on the job!  Doctors, accountants, and lawyers are great examples of this.

Perhaps the best thing you get when you hire an engineer–someone experienced on your side with no vested financial interests to anything except the success of our project.  In the field of buildings, this can be an expensive lesson to learn.

So next time you see the initials PE behind someone’s name, know what that means.  A professional engineer.  One for one, you know something about this person’s background:

• They received a degree from an engineering college.
• They interned under experienced engineers for four years.
• They passed a rigorous exam on engineering fundamentals and finer points of engineering within their specialty.
• They were endorsed by other established professionals.
• They are licensed by the State to practice engineering.
• They are bound by a code of ethics regarding professional conduct.
• They continually receive ongoing training on various parts of their industry.

Guy Van Meulebrouck PE

Guy Van Meulebrouck

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I have been enjoying my adventure into edible landscaping this past year.  I started out by visiting the ECHO Nursery in Fort Myers.  This place is worth visiting.  It displays how gardens could be–attractive landscape that you eat. ECHO Nursery takes profits from the sale of carefully it’s researched edible plants for our climate and then sponsors edible plant nurseries in third world countries (www.echonet.org).  If you didn’t know the ECHO garden was all edible, you would think you were visiting some attractive garden space.  So planning a garden as if it were landscape is maybe a newer concept but a workable concept.

There are a lot of edible plants that look just as good in a landscape as more conventional plants.  I like my banana trees as much as any palm trees I have had before, for example.  The loofah vine flowers for months at a time and looks like hibiscus, as another example.

The concept of eating out of the landscape/garden is green in many ways. Sure, there’s the organic aspect and the healthy food side to it.  There is an economical side too.  Every $100 of produce I eat from my landscape just skipped the whole refrigerated transport and chemical treatments of conventional crops, using less energy.  It didn’t get taxed either, so that $100 of produce is actually worth $107.  But there’s more.  I didn’t have to earn the income to buy the produce at a grocery store, so the taxes there are avoided. In the end, $100 of tomatoes/asparagus etc has the net effect of say $130.  That’s not a bad investment. And once you get nature working for you-it works all day every day for you-asking little in return.  (Another way of looking at that is a reduction in carbon footprint).

I meet a lot of people with no experience in plants that still find the subject interesting.  People with gardening experience are aware of the continued work required to maintain the garden.  Even for people wanting to spend minimal time gardening there are still lots of possibilities.  Trees are the easiest of all to garden.  Lot’s of great things grow on trees in Florida: nuts, avocadoes, plums, peaches, coconuts, star fruits, pears, oranges, tangerines. Next in easiness is vines (grapes/passion-fruits/japanese spinach/loofahs).  Watermelons are pretty easy too.

Here are some tips I learned so far:

1.  Plant small quantities of a lot of types of edible plants instead of a large quantity of a few crops.   In other words, having two plants each of thirty different varieties works better than having fifteen plants of four different types.  That way you get to eat out of your garden with variety all year long instead of trying to get your neighbors to accept bags and bags of zucchinis (they seem to hate that).

2.  Consult the department of agriculture or the book “Gardening in Florida” by Tom MacCubbin (Cool Springs Press) to learn what plants can be planted on any given month of the year.  It is easy to garden all year long in Florida if you know what to plant each month.

3.  Start off with a master plan based on what is nice to look at.  I took a google image of my house/lot and planned out views of the garden looking from the sidewalk, the front door, the path from the driveway, etc.  Then I imagined what would I like to see when I looked at the garden from those vantage points.  I won’t have my master plan totally built for years to come, but right from the get go this is the best looking garden I have ever had.  My wife even likes looking at it.

4.  Add focal points to the garden.  This is where a garden really starts transforming into a landscape.  Focal points can range from expensive gazebos/fountains/ponds  to inexpensive bird baths or gazing balls.  I make sure the focal points get put right into the views I set aside in the master plan.

5.  Composting is simple and actually fun.  I was surprised how proud I felt the first time I scattered rich dirt I made out into the landscape.

6.  Learn the insects that help you.  By not squashing every bug in the garden you can get nature working even harder for you.  Don’t squash bugs that eat pests.  Likewise, some birds help gardens, some birds eat the fruits.  Building bird houses for the good birds makes it all that much easier.  For example, I was pleased to find two praying mantis in my yard, which I transplanted into the garden.

That’s all for now.  Thanks for the great feedback on this article!

Originally, the old timers explained to me, HVAC engineering consisted of steam systems for heating and ventilation ductwork.  Plumbing was done by the HVAC engineer. 

 When Carrier invented air conditioning, HVAC engineers were spectaters at first since the only people with mastery over air conditioning were the inventers.  Back then, Carrier provided the engineering for the systems and HVAC engineers handled the steam, ventilation,  and plumbing.  As Carrier faced competitors, things got complicated.  Vendors would compete for the designs in order to sell the equipment. 

It wasn’t long before engineers came up to speed with the air conditioning end and added air conditioning  to their domain.  This solved some problems owners were having dealing directly with vendors who were competing for the sale with varying types of systems and varying degrees of quality.  Now owners had bid documents for air conditioning that Carrier/York/Trane etc could bid, and all the bids were based on a common type of system and level of quality. 

When fire protection came about, same thing.  Vendors took responsibility for the designs.  Eventually, engineers became familiar with the new technology and owners tired of being caught in the middle of competing vendors, although differences between competing vendors and types of systems was not that dramatic and fire protection codes excelled in spelling out quality of systems.

Digital controls and fire alarms have met with similar experiences.

I see the same trend with geothermal in Florida.  Pioneering geothermal involved risk.  For example, knowledge of the aquifers and wells were new things and brought about uncertainties (“how deep would the well have to be? ” what temperatures of water would occur at what depths?).  Engineers typically don’t like risk, contractors live with risk all the time. Hence, contractors have been leading the way pioneering the pump and dump type of system, which Florida is uniquely suited for.  Clearly, a learning curve was invovled around the engineering aspects.  Often times, contractors viewed their hard earned knowledge as proprietary.  Meanwhile engineers have become more familiar with geothermal in Florida.  Now owners can step out of the way of competing contractors and present contractors with bid documents and get back competitive bids that are comparable in terms of quality.  Contractors can base prices on blueprints and specifications and eliminate a certain amount of guesswork in their pricing.

In the end, it turns out there are perhaps a thousand ways to screw up a geothermal system in Florida and maybe 6 ways to do one right.  The technology for the system itself is fairly simple.  The hard part is to keep the multitude of bad ideas and ideas that work in other parts of the country out of the picture in order to stick with what works.

Just as there was a learning curve for contractors to find out about the engineering aspects of geothermal, engineers are faced with a learning curve to come up to speed with the things contractors have already learned the hard way.  This is made more difficult by the views of hard won knowledge as something proprietary.  The more contact geothermal engineers have with well drillers and geothermal contractors, the smoother the learning curve.

The future looks bright for geothermal.  I consider that the main thing standing in the way are the ghosts of  past learning curves.  But the actual technology of what works in Florida is by this time better understood by all.