John Sirman of LoopTech leads participants through the exterior field headers/manifold station at ClimateMaster’s inaugural GeoRanch training event.

OKLAHOMA CITY — ClimateMaster and LoopTech recently welcomed more than 200 attendees to their inaugural GeoRanch event in New Waverly, Texas. The GeoRanch, located at LoopTech’s headquarters, hosted in-the-field training featuring live demonstrations focusing on geothermal system components and different types of installation techniques.

The training consisted of nine stations demonstrating different aspects of geothermal. Stations included drilling techniques and looping, grout machines and grouting, HDPE piping and fusion techniques, exterior field headers and manifolding, interior piping/circulation pumps/air flow, ground-source heat pumps, flushing and purging, pond loops, and economics/GeoDesigner. An additional station reserved for school district attendees was also held.

“GeoRanch was a location where you could see and touch all aspects of the geothermal installation,” said Tracy Tee, district manager, ClimateMaster. “We were able to display the new units with ClimateMaster’s iGate™ technology, which will make a real impact on our industry.”

Russell Buras, president, LoopTech said, “It was a pleasure for us to host this first-class event at our new headquarters just north of Houston. It was fun, informative, and just being able to show people what we do and how we do it really made a difference. I believe GeoRanch can be a model to use across the country on how to get people interested, educated, and how to grow the geothermal market.”

Cody Gebhart of Aces AC Supply, a ClimateMaster distributor, brought over 38 dealers from 20 different companies. Gebhart said, “The amount of information that was supplied in one work day would have taken over a year’s worth of training dates to bring it all together.

“I couldn’t have been more pleased with the way the event was set up or executed. Gathering that amount of people in one place for an event like GeoRanch had to take an immense amount of planning, and you could definitely tell that it paid off.”

According to Boyd Lee, director of marketing and member services, Caddo Electric Cooperative, “GeoRanch was very beneficial, primarily from the standpoint of getting to know the ClimateMaster family of vendors and contractors. It was also very obvious that ClimateMaster attracts high-quality contractors to its fold.”

Publication date: 6/25/2012