Can you believe this weather?

The springlike autumn we are having has been helpful since we fell behind a wee bit on the outside work.  On the south side of the house there will be two stucco walled garden rooms.  From the inside we can access each of these rooms and from them we can move into the rest of the yard.  One will be planted as an English cottage garden (think roses and lots of flowering plants, a little bit of messiness and lots of color and fragrance).  The other will be more Mediterranean (think tile, fountain, neat beds of plants) and used as an outdoor eating space.  We had to hold up the construction of the walls to get approval from the City (yes, we had to go back again).  Then we were further delayed as we waited to get the exterior geothermal system hooked up.

Exterior tubes of the geothermal system buried in a trench about 4 feet under ground.

The picture shows part of the tubing that is buried in a trench.  Toward the top of the picture you can see the tubes curving downward as the enter the well hole that was drilled to take them 200 feet into the Earth.  There are a total of 4 such holes.  A pair of tubes enters each hole, one tube takes water down into the Earth and the other tube brings it back up to pass on to the next well.  After the water flows through all 4 wells it can then enter the house and be used by the geothermal heat pump unit to heat or cool the house (see an earlier post for an explanation of how the system works).  We just learned today that the solution in the tubes will be a mixture of about 85% water and 15% methanol (the same alcohol that is used in that blue liquid you squirt on your windshield).

There's not much to show on the garden walls yet, but the next week should bring some progress in that area.

Onward and upward (or in this case, downward),
Mark, Mark and Isabel