Welcome to Iceland!

No worries, we haven't abandoned Our House and moved to Iceland. Already for a while we've been wondering if it's worth the effort to maintain a server computer for e-mail and web pages, and when our domain ulich.org was due for renewal this summer, we decided to outsource this service to OrangeWebsite in Reykjavík, Iceland.

There are two key reasons for choosing Iceland: first, the services of OrangeWebsite are running on 100% green energy, i.e. their servers are powered by geothermal energy, which is in abundance on volcanic Iceland. The photo above is of the volcano Hengill, which is one of the sources of Reykjavík's energy, and also the namesake of the server our services are running on now. Secondly, and equally importantly, Iceland has some of the world most rigorous laws on data protection and privacy. While this blog is still hosted by Google, we are investigating if we can transfer it to Iceland, too. The difficulty lies in the need to port it from Blogger to WordPress.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (source).

Day 29a: We Are Going Geothermal!

The drilling work of the geothermal was completed on Day 29 (19th February). The team found bedrock at a depth of 18 metres, and then drilled a well of 125 metres into the bedrock, i.e. a total depth of 143 metres. Temperatures were down to –22°C last night, followed by a bright a sunny day. This meant that all the water, which came out of the well, had created solidly frozen dusty ice around the bore hole. In the foreground, 150 metres of hose wait to be lowered into the well.

At about midday, the drilling was completed, and the hose was installed. It was then connected to the pipes coming from the heat pump in the house. The hose forms a loop, meaning it goes 143 m into the well, turns around, and comes back up. A special liquid containing water and 28% ethanol (denatured, so no use to steal the stuff!) will be pumped through the well, which will pick up heat from the ground and deliver it to the heat pump in the house, which, in turn, will do some magic to heat our water. More on that later.

The tracked drill was then loaded back onto its lorry in order to be transported to another house in Sodankylä by the same manufacturer for drilling the next well.

The material extracted from the bore hole is a mix of very fine dust and water. This is simply ejected into the surroundings. At temperatures around –20°C this mixture freezes rapidly onto any kind of structures, and thus a few trees nearby were converted into bizarre looking ice sculptures or some form of Tolkienesque forest.

In the evening, the geothermal heat pump was started up, but at this stage a pump with a barrel of fluid was attached to it. This will run for a few hours to make sure there are no air bubbles in the system.

Here's a view of the geothermal heat pump, with the front panel removed. The two thick hoses (light-grey, perpendicular to the vertical brass pipes in the lower right) are connected to the temporary pump. The two insulated black hoses coming out of the floor are connected to the well. The white plastic tank on top of the brass pipes is the overflow reservoir, and it serves as a place to check if there's enough liquid in the system. The rest of the machine provides warm water for the floor heating as well as for the taps and shower. The beige, large body in the top two-thirds of the device are in fact the water tanks for the hot water supply.

All of this was connected right away, which means that since this day, Our House is powered by geothermal energy. Yay!

Day 28: Firewall and Geothermal Well

On Monday afternoon (18th February) it got busy at the construction site. We began the masonry with the construction of the firewall, for which one pile of bricks was used up – only to find out that we were some 15 bricks short. Thus I had to get more, and bring them into the house on the same day, in order to have them warm up and de-ice overnight. The photo shows the final product at the end of Day 28, including the gap on the top.

Soon after midday, two lorries arrived, one of which is a specialised vehicle, which carries the tracked drill and houses a huge compressor. After a short while, work began on the drilling of the geothermal well, which will provide the energy for Our House. The photo shows the lorry after unloading the drill.

The drill was driven to the correct location, and then it was coupled by a pressure hose to the compressor on the lorry (the orange hose in the background), which provided compressed air at 28 bar in order to drive the drill.

Probably due to the vicinity of the river Kitinen, a lot of water came our of the bore hole, and the team had to keep pumping it out. The deeper the bore hole gets, the more difficult it is to extract the water: the pressure increases 1 bar per 10 metre.

Day 3: More Machines and Some Pipes

Day 3 of the construction saw gravel being filled in in order to raise the foundations to the correct level and to provide a solid base for it all. The panorama above shows that another yellow toy, aka wheeled loader, has arrived. It seems we lost quite a few more trees than we anticipated (the gap in the middle of the photo). Apparently, this was necessary in order to dig the trench for the water pipes to where we can connect to the regional network. On the other hand, we wanted to have a nice view from the living room and kitchen, so we would've at least thinned out the forest anyway. At least now we don't need to worry about buying fire wood for next winter.

The next photo is a sign of things to come: these pipes will connect a well to the heating system of our house. The well will be drilled some 100 m or so into the bed rock and provide us with geothermal energy.

Above, the gravel area marks the location of our future house, and the grey pipes with orange caps indicate the waste water drains. The one closest by is for the kitchen, the one right behind and furthest away is for sauna and shower, and the one offset to the right is for the toilet/bathroom. In the background again the pipes for the geothermal well.