| There is a new commercial building in the final stages of development on Provost Road in Silverdale. It sits on a half an acre of land and features 4,000 square feet of office space, 4,000 square feet of warehouse space, concrete and stick frame construction and a super efficient, environmentally friendly geothermal ground source heating and cooling system.
“We have gone to a lot of expense to make [the building] energy efficient,” said Rhonda Brown, who co-owns the building with John Poppe. “We’re excited to be able to offer this.”
The geothermal system is the first such system to be used in a commercial building in Kitsap County and was installed by Mayda and Sons Mechanical of Bremerton.
The family owned and operated Mayda and Sons, which was founded by George Mayda more than half a dozen years ago, originally focused on commercial refrigeration and HVAC systems. Several years ago the company began to expand their business focus to energy efficient, renewable resource heating and cooling systems.
“It’s a new step for us,” said Kristen Mayda, project manager for Mayda and Sons.
Although the company has only been working with the renewable energy systems for a couple of years, the volume of business in this area increased significantly enough to expand the company.
“We’ve had to create a new division,” said Mayda.
She and her husband, Michael, George Mayda’s oldest son, run the new division, called Thermal Systems. George and his wife, Diana, continue to manage Mayda and Sons with the help of youngest son Erick and his wife, Christine.
Thermal Systems — which is currently the only dealer of these systems in Kitsap County — installs a variety of alternative heating and cooling systems, including the geothermal ground source system, radiant in-floor heating and solar thermal heating.
“All of those systems are extremely energy efficient and environmentally friendly,” said Mayda.
For example, the geothermal ground source system installed in the Provost building is rated at 400 percent efficiency, an exponential improvement over the 94 percent efficiency rating of natural gas or propane. “It’s incredible, said Mayda.
The company began exploring installing these systems because of concerns about the rising costs of fuel and our use, as a society, of natural resources.
“These alternative heating and cooling systems are so important,” Mayda said. She cited a case study on the geothermal system that found a 3,000 square foot house using the system had only a $21 a month heating bill.
“I wish I had that kind of heating bill,” she said, adding that the entire Mayda family is in the process of converting their homes from old heat pumps to these new, alternative systems.
The geothermal system is a bit more expensive to install then a traditional system, she said, but those costs are recouped quickly through energy savings.
“For every unit of energy you’re using you’re storing four,” Mayda said. Plus, “it’s all renewable energy.”
To date, most of the energy efficient systems that Thermal Systems has installed have been in residential buildings, both new construction and retrofits. The company is working with Puget Sound Energy to develop commercial incentives to encourage other commercial building owners to install similar systems, and they are in the process of proposing the geothermal ground source system to one of their other commercial clients, a restaurant chain.
The system used in the Provost building, the WaterFurnace geothermal comfort system, uses clean, free, renewable energy found below the earth’s surface, rather than relying on fossil fuels. The system taps into energy from the sun that is stored in the earth, collects it through an “earth loop” — an underground, heat-fused piping system. Fluid is circulated throughout the loop, transferring heat to or from the ground.
Mayda describes the system as “similar to your refrigerator. It’s simply a process of moving heat energy from one point to another using heat exchangers for water, air and refrigerant. During heating, the WaterFurnace unit extracts heat from the earth loop (or well water) and…the heat is intensified and transferred to the air. During cooling, the process is reversed.”
The earth loop configurations used depend on the building site, availability of water and other factors. A horizontal loop was selected for the Provost site, as space was plentiful. Where space is limited, vertical loops are used.
“A nearby pond could also be used for a geothermal loop,” said Mayda. “Where well water is plentiful and low in minerals, an open loop system may be ideal. We design the best loop system for each home.”
The system provides heating, central air conditioning and domestic hot water heating.
Mayda and Sons Mechanical and its Thermal Systems division will be the first new tenants in the Provost building. Mayda said they expect to move into their space, approximately one-third of the total available square footage, in mid-June. They will use their new location not only as their new headquarters, but also to show off the geothermal unit in action.
“The space will have a very industrial look, and the ceiling will be open, exposing the unit,” said Mayda. Visitors will have the opportunity to see the heating and cooling unit, as well as the ground loop piping coming up out of the ground into the system. Mayda and Sons also plans to install a separate energy meter on the building to monitor cost savings. | 
