Encouraging businesses to try environmentally-friendly technologies has long been a serious challenge for supporters of Mother Nature. Despite what appear to be evident long-term benefits, many of the options out there for green building come with serious start-up price tags. Sometimes, what’s required to make earth-friendly building work is a bit of enthusiasm combined with a serving of good fortune. In the case of Jasper’s Chad Gulevich and Bear’s Den Self-Storage, that formula certainly applies.

Gulevich admits to having known very little about geo-thermal heating when he first decided to build a structure full of storage units in the Stan Wright Industrial Park.

“I knew I wanted heated storage,” he says. “A boiler system would have been cheaper to install, for sure.” However, Gulevich is always considering different options and newer technologies, and when he came across the concept of heating his building using the source beneath his feet, he thought he’d give it a try.

The most common method of obtaining geo-thermal heat is by drilling a series of bore holes and threading a tube filled with glycol through the pipe. The temperature changes from the top of the holes to the bottom creates energy that can then be passed through a building through an in-floor heating system. In order for this set-up to work, however, soft ground is a must. Gulevich had a problem.

“Here we’re basically standing on 400 feet of solid rock,” he says, looking down. On to Plan B. Obtain that temperature difference by drilling two water wells. Some 160 feet below the surface of what was to become the Bear’s Den, Gulevich struck water, and with it, the means to heat his storage facility.

Now, the water circulates past super cooled ethanol in a small control room on the main floor of the facility, and the temperature difference created by this exposure is transferred to a heat pump which supplies the building with heat.

The system is shut down for the summer months, but if the patrons of the Bear’s Den ever needed an air-conditioned facility, a simple reversal of the flow would enable Gulevich to provide that service, too.

“It’s so simple, it’s almost stupid,” he says, looking at the unprepossessing collection of pipes and tanks.

It’s simple, it works, and down the line, Gulevich is confident that the system will save him money. He doesn’t have a definite idea of what the comparative costs are between a standard heating set-up and his water-based system.

“If this had been a retrofit, I’d have a really good idea right now, but because this was a new build, I’m not completely sure,” he says. “I think it’ll be paid back within five or seven years, I mean, we did go to some extra lengths with the well drilling, but if the price of gas keeps increasing...”

As someone who describes himself as being almost constantly involved in some construction project or another, Gulevich is happy to have had the experience of using the geo-thermal system and would use it again, but he says the conditions have to be there in order for it all to work. Given Jasper’s hard soil, a little luck is important.

“The big gamble is that you might not find water when you drill down,” Gulevich says. “It was a gamble for me, we got lucky because if there hadn’t been any water there I wouldn’t have been able to get back that money I spent on drilling.”

Since installing the system, there have been no issues with the heat whatsoever, he says, touring the cavernous halls of his facility, quiet on this weekday afternoon. 

“I’ve been quite happy, it’s been positive.”

Even after establishing that he wanted to proceed with a geo-thermal system, Gulevich found himself having to choose between a myriad of delivery options presented by the firms interested in the project.

“It really varies, in the method of getting the heat from the ground, in the price. It was almost like being on a game show,” he says.

The more he researched, the more comfortable he was with the engineering firm from Edmonton he wound up using to build his system. When he approached Parks about the project, he found that he knew more about geo-thermal heating systems than the development officers who would be reviewing his development permits.

“It didn’t take them very long to do all the research, and then I had to be very definitive about how I was going to be using the water. Parks was very good about it.”

Clearly, his experience with geo-thermal heat has only enhanced Gulevich’s interest in greener technologies.

“Who knows where solar power is going to take us,” he says. “It might become more reasonable and feasible to use.”