The Bloomberg Network’s syndicated television program,
energyNow!, covered the installation of a geothermal heat pump system at George Washington’s 1732 birthplace in Virginia. energyNow! is dedicated to energy and environmental issues.
As the father of our country, George Washington was known as a forward thinker and an innovator. Now, visitors to the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Virginia can experi-ence that same spirit when they visit a building that is heated and cooled by a technology that uses the earth’s natural energy.
“The National Park Service had a problem when trying to cool down the sweltering heat inside George Washington’s birth home: how could it make the Colonial Beach, Virginia, house more energy efficient and reduce its energy bills, while still maintaining the historical location’s integrity?” asked Correspondent Josh Zepps.
“You want the public, when they go there, to get a sense of what this looked like at the time,” said Jon Jarvis, Director of the National Park Service. “You would never put solar panels on the roof of the George Washington birthplace because the public might get a little confused.”
Zepps follows each step of the site’s “extreme energy makeover” as National Park Service workers completed the archeologically sensitive geothermal heat pump project inside and outside the George Washington Memorial House.
GEO July 21, 2011
