Church goes green

BY ALBERT KRAMBERGER

editor@transcontinental.ca

A Dorval church has gone underground for its energy needs.

St. Mark’s Church on Lakeshore Drive broke ground Sunday on its new geothermal heating system, which will consist of four wells, dug about 500 feet into the earth. The wells will extract heat from the ground, where it remains relatively constant year round, and will then be brought up to four large indoor heat pumps. The heat pumps will provide heat and air conditioning for four sections of the parish, the main hall, its basement, the historic chapel (built in 1898) and the adjacent day-care facility, Centre de la Petite Enfance Dorval.

The work is expected to take about a month and the new system should reduce heating costs by about 40 per cent, though the start-up cost is about $160,000. So even though the payback period could extend to almost 20 years, church officials believe they should lead the way and be environmentally friendly by not burning fossil fuels. Right now the church is using heating oil and they spent about $20,000 on it this winter.

“We hope to keep heating costs down, of course, and we also don’t want to release any more carbon emissions into the atmosphere,” Rev. Karen Chalk said Sunday morning, after giving her blessing to the project outdoors.

“It’s a big investment but we had an endowment for capital projects,” she said, adding the church made about $7,000 in interest annually with that fund. “We hope to save about $10,000 a year on heating with the new system.”

The church was encouraged to switch to a geothermal heating system by former Dorval mayor Peter Yeomans, a parishioner, who informed them the city has already employed it for some municipal buildings, Chalk said. After doing some research, the church commissioned some engineering studies last summer.

Churchwarden Russell Peden said, as far as he knows, St. Mark’s is the first church in Quebec to use a geothermal heating system. “It’s an exciting day for sure,” he said.

Parish member Raymond Noël said financial savings are not the most important element of the project. “We have to practice what we preach,” he said. “We have to take care of the Earth properly.”

St. Mark’s used to be part of a dual-energy program (oil and electricity) until Hydro-Québec cut off churches from it last April. The heating bill for the church for January and February 2006 was $5,000 and that doubled with just heating oil for the same two months this year, Peden said.

With St. Mark’s high ceilings, 45 feet at its peak, and its minimal insulation, the payback period of the installation investment is expected to stretch at least 16 years, Peden said.