Brief

Though a delightful collection of converted barns with award winning gardens, these holiday cottages had crippling running costs due to the installation of night storage heaters and electric water heaters. Stove Shop Renewables were asked to find a carbon neutral solution which also reduced costs, as well as improving the facilities of the cottages.

As if this was not enough, Stove Shop Renewables were faced with time constraints as completion was required before the beginning of the new holiday season. Was all this possible?

Process

Stove Shop Renewables devised a bespoke system to fit the customer’s needs, combining four solar manifolds with a total of eighty eight evacuated tubes, and a Baxi Solo Innova 50 wood boiler. This is a revolutionary approach to providing heat to nine holiday cottages, as each was fitted with under-floor heating, a small radiator circuit and mains pressure hot water.

As a backup, each cottage has an immersion heater. Moreover, indicator lights in the boiler room allow the customer to measure consumption from each individual cottage. Other provisions in the boiler room include a high limit thermostat on the cylinder which will circulate water around the heat main, in case of possible over production from the solar panels. There is also a low limit thermostat on the cylinder which prevents any demand from switching on the pumps. This allows for faster heating recovery and has a yellow indicator light on the control board.

Three 6a circuit breakers within the control box allow the boiler to be fired independently if needed or with just one group of cottages.  Two 2a circuit breakers isolate the pump sets; matching the load of occupation or in the event of breakdown , the faulty one switches off and the system will still function.

Outcome

Stove Shop Renewables have developed a highly intricate heating solution to suit the customer’s needs. As well as being virtually carbon neutral, the input of the solar panels allows the Baxi wood burning boiler to batch burn at intervals, making it much more cost effective than using biomass alone. The customer has seen a 90% reduction in heating costs due to using sustainable sourced wood from the farm. This type of installation ideally requires a boiler room.