A new startup called Dandelion, born from the secretive and futuristic lab "X" of Google's
parent company Alphabet, says it will offer affordable geothermal heating and cooling
systems to homeowners.
And, Dandelion has raised a $2 million seed round to kick-off its sales and operations.
Geothermal systems are better for the environment because they significantly cut down on carbon
dioxide emissions.
In the U.S., buildings account for 39% of all carbon emissions, mostly from the combustion
of fossil fuels for heating and cooling.
In the Northeast, heating and cooling is particularly carbon-intensive due to the relatively high
use of fuel oil or propane as a heating fuel.
This also leads to unpredictable costs for homeowners; if fuel prices rise during a particularly
long and cold winter, their wallets take a hit.
Home geothermal systems can offer lower and steadier monthly energy costs because they
use the energy in the ground under your yard.
The ground stays at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit year round.
In the wintertime, water circulating through U-shaped plastic pipes installed in your yard
absorbs heat from the earth, and then a geothermal heat pump inside of your home turns it into
warm air.
In the summertime, the pump draws the warm air out of your home and the so-called “ground
loops” disperse the heat into the earth.
These systems are most useful in climates with cold winters and hot summers, because
there’s a large variation in temperature between the ground and the air.
Unfortunately, they’ve typically required large up-front installation fees; this has
discouraged consumer adoption, even though people in these regions currently spend a
lot of money to heat and cool their homes.
That’s why Dandelion decided to try to find a new approach that could make home geothermal
more affordable.
The process of installing ground loops in homeowners’ yards has typically been messy
and intrusive, using wide drills that are designed to dig water wells at depths of over
1,000 feet.
These machines are unnecessarily large and slow for installing a system that needs only
a few 4” diameter holes at depths of a few hundred feet.
So Dandelion Team decided to try to design a better drill that could reduce the time,
mess and hassle of installing these pipes, which could in turn reduce the final cost
of a system to homeowners.
They began prototyping and testing all sorts of ideas, like modifying a jackhammer that
could bore itself into the ground; freezing the ground with liquid nitrogen and chipping
the soil away with a hammer; and even using a high pressure water jet to demolish the
ground at rocket speeds.
After months of testing, they hit upon a design for a fast, slender drill that hit their objectives.
It could drill just one or two deep holes just a few inches wide, and compared to typical
installation rigs, it produced less waste and took up much less space as it operated.
It left a typical suburban backyard relatively undisturbed, so they could minimize landscaping
costs for homeowners.
Just as importantly, it was fast; they could install all the ground loops in less than
a day, instead of the more typical 3 or 4 days.
As a result of all these improvements, Dandelion is ready to open for business.
The Dandelion system will cost homeowners much less than conventional systems, and they
are signing up customers now in the state of New York, where they are also looking to
partner with local heating and cooling installers.
And they have developed a financing program that will allow homeowners to install a Dandelion
system for no money down and save money from day one while locking in low, predictable
payments for heating and cooling.