Westchester Country Club digs geothermal heating system

RYE, N.Y. - Officials at Westchester Country Club have gone underground, at least as it pertains to the club's heating and cooling needs.

A $7 million renovation at the historic layout, which hosts the annual PGA Buick Classic, has resulted in the conversion of the 80-year-old club's massive 340-room hotel from a traditional heating and cooling system to a geothermal system.

The project's contractor was R. J. Dooley & Associates of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The firm has installed geothermal systems for over 17 years, including those at golf clubs in Georgia and the Midwest.

"Golf courses are a prime site for geothermal systems because of the available land," said Bob Dooley, owner of the firm. "This type of system can be installed anywhere. In fact, the Westchester site was one of the more challenging projects we have undertaken because we had to drill through bedrock."

Some 180 wells were drilled to depths of 300 feet into solid granite located below open land at Westchester CC, which includes two golf courses, a hotel, clubhouse, tennis courts and other amenities.

The geothermal system runs water through underground pipes and uses a stable ground temperature to act as both a heating and cooling engine. (The earth's temperature is a constant 55 degrees some 15 feet below the surface.)

Water flowing through six miles of ductwork connects to individual heat pumps in each room of the hotel, built at the turn of the 20th century. The water passing through the piping cools rooms by absorbing heat during the summer and is warmed to heat the spaces during the winter. The re-circulated water always returns to the building at 55 degrees. The club uses a backup boiler and water-cooling tower for kitchen and laundry operations.

Disruption to the club was minimal and the system was installed so as to be unobtrusive, Dooley said. At its peak, about 60 workers were involved with the project, which took a little over a year to complete.

"The vertical bores took up about an acre and a half," he said. "We picked an area in an open field off the first green of the South Course. It was either there or the driving range, and we felt the site we picked would cause the least inconvenience. We pulled topsoil off and pushed it back once we were done drilling."

"The technology made sense and the system is environmentally sound," said Bob James, the club's executive director.

James said that while the geothermal system was somewhat more costly (around $350,000 more) than if the club had opted for a more conventional heating and cooling system, the amount of time it will take to recoup the extra cost is expected to be only a year and a half. The club expects to reduce its annual oil consumption by around 200,000 gallons a year.

"We budgeted $217,000 for oil last year and that figure is now $99,000 for the current year. And we may be even below that. This system will save the club considerable money down the road," James said.

The club has applied for a New York State alternative energy grant to help defray some of the cost of the new system, and has requested a special lower electricity use rate offered by a local power company for reducing a building's overall energy consumption.

"This type of system makes a lot of sense fora country club, or anywhere else where you have available land and are looking for a lot of individual control to heat and cool rooms," James said

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