The requirement:
The historic and picturesque Tracey Estate is located in the Blackdown Hills. The estate is run on a sustainable system, with 400 acres of woodland and farms as well as a venue for weddings and events. The estate wanted a system which could use their own sustainable wood resources to further enhance their position as an environmentally friendly enterprise. The system was required to heat and provide hot water for two large houses, workshops and drying rooms for their log business. Tracey Estate wanted to bring their existing systems up to date, with the ability to expand the heating network when required. The new biomass boiler was designed to replace three systems including fossil fuel burning oil and LPG and two existing wood burning boilers.
Our Solution:
Following initial discussions to ensure that our solution met the estate’s requirement to heat two homes, workshops and drying rooms, we suggested they use a GlenFarrow 210 biomass boiler with fan coil units and pipework controls in a defacto Local Heat Network. The system was also designed with excess capacity, so additional buildings could easily be added to the network when required. We then worked with the Tracey Estate to connect into the existing network of pipes and accumulator tanks, bringing all the existing systems together so they could be powered from one boiler. The boiler and plant room were located in a disused barn, bringing that back into use as well. The team at GlenFarrow also undertook the initial work on the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) application for the installation. The most difficult element of the project was that one of the houses was 250m from the boiler and 20m higher. We overcame the problem by fitting a separate plate heat exchanger and a pressure-calculating pump which allowed the higher house to have its own closed system.
What the client said:
“We wanted to renew old and outdated systems which used expensive and polluting fossil fuels and ensure that we used waste wood from our own woodlands to continue our aim of being a sustainable enterprise. The GlenFarrow solution allowed us to do this and to maintain our environmentally friendly credentials. They made the whole process painless from the initial planning right through to commissioning stage and even helped us with our RHI application. Scott and the team were a delight to deal with and have been both professional and totally customer focused, providing us with a solution that meets our requirements. Our new boiler is not only environmentally friendly but far more efficient than the systems it replaced allowing us to switch from three heating systems to one.” Howard Furnival, Tracey Estate
