Even Greener at the Green Mountain Club HQ
Even a day hike on the Long Trail can feel like an epic journey, thanks to the tree roots, boulders, mud, slippery rocks and scree that litter the trail. It’s one of the toughest thoroughfares in the East, but not from lack of trail maintenance. On the contrary, the Green Mountain Club is just staying true to founder James P. Taylor’s original 1910 mission to traverse the highest, the most rugged and most beautiful of Vermont’s green areas. Most beautiful? Yes. But you definitely have to earn your vistas.
Off the trail, the GMC is equally protective of its green spaces, and last month unveiled a new wood-burning heat and hot-water system on its Waterbury Center campus. That might not sound so very different from the Vermont Castings that’s currently cranking out heat in your living room, but combined with new and existing solar panels and solar trackers, this wood gasification boiler means the club is now net-neutral and expects to produce more energy than it consumes.
So what does gold-star-worthy energy production look like?
Well, it looks an awful lot like a reused 8×20-foot shipping container with a red wood boiler inside, attractively clothed in knotty pine. It answers to the name of “Biobox.”
Exterior of the Biobox.
A European concept based on using shipping containers to house freestanding heat and hot-water systems, at the biobox’s heart is a prefabricated wood-burning boiler system that replaces propane used for heat and hot water at the “Back 40,” or the summertime staff headquarters for GMC hut caretakers and trail crews. The biobox provides hot water for washing dishes, showers and washing machines for crews on their days off the mountain, because let’s face it — that trail funk that reeks of authentic adventuring out on the trail is the last thing you want to smell on your day off.
So here’s what heats things up at GMC headquarters:
From left: David Frank of SunWood Systems in Waitsfield; GMC Executive Director Will Wiquist.
It also runs the clothes dryer, which is pretty essential to GMC crews’ day-off happiness (after all, the Green Mountains weren’t named for their desert-like conditions). Of course, these folks aren’t on site during the winter months, but until Mud Season dries up and caretakers move back into huts, the system will keep the building warm enough to avoid frozen pipes.
Here’s how it all works: GMC staff members fuel the wood boiler with sustainably harvested wood from club-owned land in Lowell, Vt. The hot water that results is stored in large tanks that can be tapped for both heat and hot water throughout the season, while the energy needed to power the hot water through the building is sent to the grid via new and existing solar trackers. In many ways, this mimics a residential hot-water heating system — except the wood-fired boiler replaces propane fuel, and the solar panels provide the energy for the pump. Any excess energy produced goes back into the grid.
Installing the solar trackers.
This project is phase two of a $67,000 grant secured by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt). Working through the USDA Forest Service and the Vermont Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation, this phase of the project also includes four new solar panels that track the position of the sun using GPS units. By following the sun around as the seasons change, the GMC estimates that these solar trackers are up to 40 percent more efficient than static solar panels.
Solar trackers.
Intrigued? The Green Mountain Club will be offering self-guided tours of the facility soon — or you can check out GMC Director of Operations Pete Antos-Ketcham’s video tour here to tide you over until that date:
