Out in the country, traditional home defense products, like standard alarm systems, aren’t as effective because of the long distance and time before assistance can arrive. So, you have to go back to what worked in simpler times.

After some thought, we decided to build a moat around the house. Here are some pictures of the preparations for the moat going about 1/3 of the way around the house. It is approximately 10 feet wide and about 6 feet deep.

A view of the moat in progress.

Another view of the moat.

Another view of the moat with the backhoe.

Click through for more information about the moat.

Actually, we aren’t putting in a moat – the large trench is just part of the new geothermal heat pump heating system we had installed recently. The photos and videos are from after the holes were drilled but before the system was hooked up to the inside of the house.

In the below video, you can see some of the black tubing sticking out of the ground – those are the heating loops for the geothermal system. The basic idea is that water circulates from the house down into the loops drilled deep into the ground – this heats up the water to the ground temperature which is around 50 degrees all year around deep enough down. The system pumps that heated water back inside the house where the heat is extracted from the water and that heat is then used to the heat the house.

More details about our geothermal system and the installation will follow in a later post.