Schnepf Farms has been working hard this week during our freezing temperatures to protect the Queen Creek farm's peach trees that bloomed early this year due to record rainfall across the Valley.
"We start pumping water from our 2,000-foot-deep geothermal well every night around 8 p.m., so during the coldest part of the morning, the steam rises to warm the blossoms and keep our favorite fruit from these freezing temperatures," explained Carrie Schnepf, who described the method as a natural hot spring. "We still have a few more months before the peaches are ready, but we can't wait."
Geothermal wells, sometimes referred to as GeoExchange, earth-coupled, ground-source or water-source pumps, have been in use since the late 1940s. They use the relatively constant temperature of the earth as the exchange medium instead of the outside air temperature. From scorching heat in the summer to sub-zero cold in the winter—a few feet below the earth's surface the ground remains at a relatively constant temperature. Like a cave, this ground temperature is warmer than the air above it during the winter and cooler than the air in the summer and this method takes advantage of these more favorable temperatures to become highly efficient by exchanging heat with the earth through a ground heat exchanger.
