Gage County Courthouse maintenance manager Dave Jones has a simple way of explaining the work being done outside the courthouse right now.

“They’re going full bore,” Jones said. “It’s a big mess.”

The “mess” on the courthouse lawn is one part of the $2.8 million bond issue passed in 2008 to upgrade and renovate the courthouse.

One of the renovation projects is an estimated $764,000 geothermal heating and air project currently being installed.

Leuck’s Drilling Company of Omaha is drilling wells under the courthouse lawn that will house a geothermal heating and cooling system replacing the outdated boiler heating in the building.

Each well, 60 in all, reach 300 feet deep and are approximately 10 inches in diameter. Twenty holes will be drilled on the east side of the courthouse, while 20 more will be drilled on the southeast corner and southwest corner.

Job foreman Steve Wrobleski said the project is going as planned — three wells a day — aside from a few common equipment breakdowns.

“We can go two or three months without a breakdown and then go through a couple breakdowns in one week,” Wrobleski said.

The drill used by Leuck’s consists of a stem mounted to a platform that lowers the drill bit and pumps water through the stem.

Wrobleski said the water pumping through the stem helps keep the carbide drill bit clean and flushes the cuttings out of the hole and back to the surface where they are removed.

Each drill stem, approximately 20 feet in length, bores into the ground until only a few feet remain when Wrobleski and his crew attach another stem on top of it and keep drilling.

Fifteen stems are needed to reach the necessary well depth of 300 feet.

“Most commercial buildings have wells up to 300 feet,” Wrobleski explained. “And houses only need to be drilled to 200 feet or so.”

At the courthouse, that 300 feet has been tough to come by.

Wrobleski said depending on the location of the well, drilling can be done in as little as an half hour or as long as two and half hours.

On the courthouse property, a tough limestone and shale layer slows down progress about 60 feet below ground level.

Whereas the crew hit limestone on the south end of the current row they are working on near the east sidewalk, a layer of shale has been causing troubles 100 feet to the north.

After the hole is drilled, Wrobleski said a bentonite based grout, essentially a type of insulating clay, will be used to line the well.

The idea, Wrobleski said, is to keep water in the well circulating through the system at a constant 54-degree temperature throughout the year that will help heat and cool the entire courthouse and slash costs.

“We would have $5,000 or $6,000 gas bills some months,” Jones explained.

Wrobleski said with a geothermal system, heating and cooling can be cut by as much as 70 percent.

At the same time the wells are being dug, Cheever Construction is removing radiators from the building and dismantling the boiler in the basement.

The boiler room will be replaced with the controls for the geothermal system, Jones said.