In late 2025, while traveling along Round Hill Road, one may have noticed the large drilling machinery on the west side of the Round Hill Community Church (RHCC). The machine was drilling into the earth to install a geothermal heating and cooling system as another step toward RHCC becoming a “Green Church”. This Green journey began in 2022 when the RHCC installed 280 solar panels on the church, Community House, and parsonage on the campus at 395 Round Hill Road. This latest commitment makes the RHCC one of the few houses of worship in the northeast to utilize this type of system to reduce fossil fuel usage.
Geothermal energy is the use of stable, shallow ground temperatures of around 55 degrees to provide efficient low carbon heating and cooling for buildings. In winter, the system extracts heat from the ground to warm inside space, and in summer the process functions in reverse, extracting heat from inside the space and transferring it back into the ground for cooling. The process utilizes a series of small diameter high density polyethylene pipes buried underground in a closed loop of water to circulate and move renewable energy to and from the building through a combination of pumps and furnaces to warm and cool air throughout the building.
RHCC got approval from the Town of Greenwich to undertake the project in June of 2025, began drilling last August, and completed the installation by the end of October. Based on the 11,000 square footage of the church and the high ceilings, it was decided to drill 12 separate wells of 500 feet deep into the ground and install 6 water furnaces and 2 heat pumps to power the system. It was helpful and cost effective that the church could use the existing ductworks in the new functionality.
After three months of initial operations. Roland Kistler, Property Manager of the RHCC who oversees the complex system, says he and the church leaders are 100% satisfied with the early operations. It has operated consistently and efficiently in delivering comfortable heating throughout all the rooms of the church. It has typically shown that geothermal heating and cooling operating systems have increased the electrical energy of a building by three-fold. He emphasized the use of the existing solar panels on the church, which historically reduced the amount of electricity used by the church, has been beneficial with the recent conversion to the geothermal system. So, in evaluating a geothermal system, the trade-off is between the elimination of oil cost vs. the increased cost of electricity to operate.
After a tour of the extensive network of pipes and pumps throughout the basement and attic of the church, Roland stated that the driving force to convert to geothermal was not just about the cost and expense. Instead it was the RHCC commitment to be a leader in the Green movement and “doing what’s right for the environment”.
