Our guide told us that the only thing that is cheap in Iceland is hot water. So we’ll take a look at Reykjavik’s hot water situation. It is one of their outstanding features.

Reykjavik heats all their homes and businesses with hot water, even in their long cold winters. They also heat the streets with hot water in the main business and shopping areas to keep them accessible in the winter time. It’s all done very cheaply as well. So they are very outstanding both environmentally and fiscally when it comes to heat, energy, and water.

Our guide said that we could take as long and as hot of showers as we wanted to, no problems. The water also tasted excellent.

What you can't tell from the first photo is that the hill on the right side is the outer rim of a volcano. They don't expect it to erupt for another 3000 years. They sunk 65 wells down into scorching hot water. The steam rises to produce power and the hot water is used to heat a different layer of water which is then sent into town for use heating the whole town.

This is where the water comes up from the wells and flows into the geothermal power plant. This plant and two others like it provide 30% of Iceland's electricity. The water starts at about 176 degrees Fahrenheit and is piped 27 miles to town. It only loses 2 degrees of heat during shipping to Reykjavik.

The geothermal hot water system is not as simple as just pumping water out of the ground and putting it in the pipes. The water has to be treated since it has high sulfur and other minerals that can corrode the pipes. The conversion to energy is also complex, but comparatively cheap.

This is Perlan. It is a hot water storage unit for the water from the geothermal plant. Hot water is piped into Reykjavik and into these tanks for storage and distribution. It has two restaurants on top. We had lunch up there. It also houses a museum, artificial geysers, and a gift shop. It overlooks the whole of Reykjavik.

The unit below was right across the street from our hotel. It is a small local bore-hole into the underground thermal water used to supplement the main hot water system. You can see some steam coming out of the pipe on the right side.