April 30, 2024 Hospitality, Wood Chip Boilers

Here’s how we turned an ancient clan estate into a modern biomass heating success story.

If there are two things that Scotland doesn’t lack, they are history and stunning natural beauty. Nowhere is this better displayed than at the magnificent Innes House.

Once belonging to the Innes clan, the estate set in 5,000 acres of parkland teems with biodiversity. However, it also serves as a productive agricultural centre with tenanted farms on site. All of this makes for a thoroughly unique backdrop to the weddings, functions and sporting pursuits that the estate hosts today.

So, where does Innasol come in? If it’s to do with domestic biomass boilers in Scotland, we’re already clued up.

This is a biomass boiler case study treading familiar ground, but with luxury Scottish flavour.

Featured System: ETA eHack 200KW
ETA Biomass Boilers in this area of Scotland are installed by our partner Dunster Biomass Heating of Forres.

Biomass Boilers: Scotland’s path to divesting from fossil fuels?

As a sprawling, mixed-use estate comprising luxury guest facilities, recreational parkland, and agricultural production, the estate has prized itself on being self-sufficient. However, the large private house that forms the centrepiece of this breath-taking estate required serious power to heat.

This was previously achieved with oil, and it cost in excess of £24,000 a year to do so.

It’s the perfect case for installing domestic biomass boilers. Scotland’s expansive size, rugged terrain and decentralised populations mean that conventional heating and power solutions aren’t always the best fit. Biomass boilers for domestic use and farm biomass boilers can really come into their own in a situation like this, providing highly-efficient heating using renewable, naturally-abundant resources at lower cost over time.

With a view to becoming wholly self-sufficient, and having the foresight to divest from fossil fuels, biomass boiler installation was the natural choice for Innes House.

The real challenge was respecting the heritage and history of the site.

Innes House biomass: a case study in long-term energy viability

Biomass heating, in Scotland, as in the rest of the UK and beyond, has long shown promise for fulfilling long-term energy needs. However, we do know of a few clients who have previously been burned by poor installation, and lack of long-term care from less experienced installers.

Partnering with Dunster Biomass Heating of Wellington, we were determined to show the estate how to do biomass boiler installation correctly. This meant that we divided the project into three phases:

We meticulously studied the particular requirements of the estate, factoring in everything from increased winter consumption to methods of installing the boiler that wouldn’t upset the historic character of the estate.

We then selected the boiler, and decided on the best way to house it and how to link it to the main estate

Lastly, we provided a long-term plan of aftercare to ensure that the estate could itself supply (and maintain a store of) sustainable woodchips for the boiler to use.

This is how it works in practice:

An ETA Hack 200kW boiler was installed in an extension to the historic, listed stable block.
A total of 250m of district heating links this to the main house, as well as three guest flats.
Estate timber is chipped by a contractor once or twice a year into a bulk store on the estate farm.
This is then transferred to the biomass boiler by agricultural trailer, which tips the chips into a fast-fill system, which in turn loads them into a chip hopper.
This hopper holds around two weeks’ worth of chips at winter consumption rates.

For the Innes Estate, this biomass boiler case study is a testament to the real benefits of biomass heating in Scotland’s unique geographical situation. It’s not just a matter of good intentions – it’s business sense.