The Standing Column Well (SCW) concept offers reduced installation cost, improved performance, and reduced operating cost for geothermal heat pump systems. Most of these systems have been designed on a completely heuristic basis, with little more than knowledge of what has worked in similar geological situations. There has never been a systematic study of the technology or establishment of siting, design, and operating guidelines. If suitable formal technical and design information were made available to the HVAC community, the number of SCW installations could be greatly increased, resulting in significant energy savings and environmental benefits.

The objective of this research project is to systematically study the characteristics of SCWs in order to establish firm guidelines for site selection, necessary well length per given load, and preferred designs and strategies. It is a further objective to develop analysis tools which can strengthen these guidelines and provide the basis for computer codes which can supply ready prediction of required well length by the HVAC community and to outline field tests which can provide monitoring data to verify the codes.