THIS
COURSE IS FULL,
and no registrations are being accepted.
The
PGWA-Endorsed
New IGSHPA
Drillers Training Course PLUS*
This course is designed to help you grow your business
into the geothermal heat pump industry.
If you are already doing geo work,
this course will help you expand your geo business.
This is only the third time that
this brand-new drillers training course has
been offered.
*
Why the “PLUS” in the course title?
This PGWA-endorsed Drillers Training
Course will contain 6 additional hours of training beyond the IGSHPA course
content. The additional 6 bonus lessons were suggested by the students who
took the course previously. The 6 bonus lessons are: Where and how to do your first
geo job, How to use PDC bits to increase your loop-hole drilling rate, How to
install loops into problem boreholes, Why you should go after retrofit geo jobs,
the role of open-loop geo systems in the geo marketplace, and What are all of the
differences between a water well and a geothermal borehole. The federal
geothermal tax credits are covered in the marketing lesson, and are described in
some detail below.
Upon completing the course and passing the open book exam you will be an IGSHPA Accredited Vertical Loop Installer.
So,
now more than ever, it is time to grow your business into geothermal borehole
drilling or geothermal loop field design.
By successfully completing the new IGSHPA Accredited Drillers
Training course and open-book exam, you will become an IGSHPA Accredited
Vertical Loop Installer. This new IGSHPA Accredited Vertical Loop Installer
credential will tell your potential geothermal customers that you have
demonstrated your knowledge of constructinlinkg vertical, closed-loop geothermal
heat exchangers and your knowledge of installing the geothermal heat pump system
equipment.
Registration:
The discounted PGWA member Drillers Training Course Plus fee is $775
(the non-member fee is $895). Print and fill out the registration form at
this link and mail it with your course fee check for
$775 ($895.00 for non-members) made out to TGAI (Todd Giddings and Associates, Inc.) Do NOT make your
course registration check out to PGWA.
The registration priority cutoff date for PGWA members
is April 24, 2009 for your form and check to be received in the U.S. Postal
Service mail at the office of Todd Giddings and Associates, Inc. Non-PGWA
member registrations and late PGWA-member registrations will be accepted to fill
the class after April 24. If you are NOT a current, 2009 member of the
Pennsylvania Ground Water Association, you may still take advantage of this
priority registration offer and discounted member fee by joining the PGWA.
To join the PGWA, fill out a membership application
at this link, and mail it
with your membership dues check made out to PGWA to PGWA, 3320 Marengo
Road, Port Matilda, PA 16870.
Remember, this course filled very quickly in January, so do
not delay in sending in your registration if you really want to attend this PLUS
training course. When this course was offered in January, 2009, more than
25 people wanted to register after the course was full. This June Drillers
Training PLUS course has a registration limit of 45 students, so you must act
quickly.
The Drillers Training Course PLUS Location:
The Holiday Inn
Harrisburg/Hershey in Grantville, PA. There is a block of sleeping rooms
available at the discounted rate of $89 per night and the cutoff date
for these discounted sleeping rooms is May 15. The hotel phone number is
717-469-0661 for sleeping room reservations. A map of the hotel location is
at this link. This is the same hotel where
PGWA holds it Winter Conference each year.
Who should attend? Water-well
drilling contractors, drilling company owners, drilling company project
managers, drilling company administrators, loop-field design engineers,
hydrogeologists and environmental engineers, and anyone else with a professional
interest in vertical GeoExchange systems, loop field production drilling
techniques, and geothermal loop installation procedures. This course in not
just for well drillers!
Why attend?
This
Drillers Training Course is designed to help water-well drillers grow their
water-well drilling business into GeoExchange borehole and loop field production
drilling. The GeoExchange industry has seen an abundance of growth in recent
years, and there is new a “perfect storm” brewing in the water-well drilling
industry. The “perfect storm” components are a) the abundant availability of
drill rigs due to the precipitous decline in new home construction, b) the
demand for geothermal systems due to the long-term increasing costs of heating
oil, natural gas, and propane, c) the desire to have a “green” heating and
cooling system, and d) new geothermal tax credits for both residential and
commercial geothermal heat pump systems. The geothermal tax credits are the
triggering component in this “perfect storm” and they are creating an
unprecedented demand for geothermal systems and for GeoExchange loop field
drilling.
This water-well drilling industry “perfect storm” is a very important new
business growth opportunity for water-well drillers. The same drilling rigs,
crews, and methods that are used to drill water wells are used to drill
geothermal loop field boreholes. There are several million-dollar loop field
drilling projects across the US that are ready-to-go, but are not being
constructed due to the lack of available drilling rigs and qualified crews.
Most commercial building and a large number of residential GeoExchange projects
are installed as vertical systems. So attend this new Accredited Driller
training course and become an Accredited Vertical Loop Installer to grow your
water-well drilling business even in this down economy.
Course Topics: How ground source heat
pump (GSHP) systems work, GSHP system design and layout basics, piping system
materials, hands-on socket and butt fusion training, pressure drop calculations,
thermal conductivity characteristics, production drilling processes, selecting
the right bit, containment of cuttings, loop installation, thermally-enhanced
grouting procedures, air and debris purging from the loops, hands-on pipe fusion
training, project bidding, and partnerships to get the job and get it done. The
three-day course schedule is available by clicking this link.
The course instructor, Todd Giddings, has
over 31 years of experience designing and installing geothermal heat pump
systems. Todd is an IGSHPA Accredited Installer, an IGSHPA Accredited
Vertical Loop Installer, and an IGSHPA Accredited Trainer. He is a registered
professional geologist and the principal hydrogeologist of Todd Giddings and
Associates, Inc. The Geo-Tec Systems division of Todd Giddings and
Associates, Inc. has designed and installed geothermal heat pump systems in
new homes up to 8,000 square feet in size and in small commercial buildings up
to 10,000 square feet in size.
The water-to-air geothermal heat pump in his home
operated for more than 31 years and required only two replacement parts,
the fan motor and the electrical contactor. This longevity demonstrates the
reliability of many geothermal heat pump systems. His office building is 22
years old and has seven geothermal heat pump units that operate so efficiently
that his electric power company routinely performs diagnostics on his
building's electric meter. The electric utility's calculations of the
kilowatt-hours per square foot per year for his office building are so far
below the utility’s expected values that their billing computer flags the
electric meter as under-registering.
Todd Giddings brings his experiences and
case-history examples into the classroom using job-site photographs in
animated PowerPoint presentations to illustrate the geothermal design
principles and technology in the IGSHPA Drillers Training course curriculum.
He enjoys sharing tips and designs that optimize the performance of geothermal
systems and that maximize the cost savings.
Todd is a Director and Treasurer of the Pennsylvania
Ground Water Association and is Webmaster of their Web site at
www.pgwa.org . He is a member and past
director of the National Ground Water Association, and is a contributing
author to the revised “Guidelines for the Construction of Vertical
Boreholes for Closed Loop Heat Pump Systems” being prepared by the
National Ground Water Association. Todd is chairman of the NGWA Geothermal
Energy Interest Group committee.
Background:
The $700 billion bailout legislation that was signed into law on
October 3, 2008 was called the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,
H.R. 1424. It contained long-term tax incentives to encourage the use of
renewable energy technologies in both homes and businesses. The energy
technologies included solar electric generation, fuel-cell electric generation,
wind electric generation, and geothermal heating and cooling.
The residential geothermal tax credit was 30% of the cost
of the geothermal heat pump system up to a maximum of $2,000, and the
commercial building geothermal tax credit is 10% of the cost of the geothermal
heat pump systems with no cap. While the residential geothermal tax credit
became effective retroactively to January 1, 2008, the commercial building
geothermal tax credit became effective after October 3, 2008, the date of the
signing of the legislation. Both the residential and commercial building
geothermal tax credits are available until the end of 2016.
A Huge New
Incentive: The $787 billion Stimulus Bill signed in February
removed the $2,000 cap on the residential geothermal tax credit!
So now, if a homeowner retrofits a closed-loop geothermal heat pump system to
replace their heating oil or gas hot-air furnace, the $20,000 that they spend is
now going to generate a $6,000 tax credit. The entire retrofitted closed-loop
geothermal heat pump system will cost them only $14,000! If you thought that
the $2,000 tax credit was going to supercharge the geothermal heat pump
industry, imagine what the full 30% tax credit is going to do. Remember, a tax
credit is subtracted from the tax that you owe the IRS; it is not a tax
deduction that just reduces your taxable income.
Two drilling companies with 3 drill rigs and 2 service
trucks are completing the 25,000 feet of closed-loop geothermal boreholes for
this central Pennsylvania project.
