Hindon Organic Farm includes an 18^th century farmhouse, run as a thriving  nine bedroom bed and breakfast business.  Increasing oil costs and an ageing boiler persuaded the owners to install a 60kW log gasification boiler. The daily task of loading and lighting the boiler takes less than five minutes and existing farm buildings can accommodate a large store of seasoned logs.

Fuel supply and boiler loading

Bulk deliveries of roundwood are purchased as required from local forestry operators and stored on the farm so that they can season. When the desired moisture content has been achieved, a contractor is engaged to cut and split the logs to the required size. A year’s supply is easily processed in one day. Filling the boiler with wood and then lighting it takes around five minutes. Reloading occurs every two to three days in summer, and up to three times per day during the exceptionally harsh winter weather in December 2010.

System design and installation

The system was designed to provide 100% of the farm's heating and hot water requirement. Once lit, the log boiler burns all the fuel in the furnace, so a 3,000 litre accumulator tank was installed to store the resulting heat and allow distribution to radiators and a store of hot water over a prolonged period. Once the temperature of the accumulator tank falls below a certain level, the boiler is refilled and ignited. For occasions when no-one is available to refill the boiler, a modern condensing oil boiler was installed: however, to date, this support boiler has not been used.

Benefits

In addition to dramatically reducing the farm's heating bills, the project has further contributed to the ‘green’ image of Hindon Organic Farm.

Download Hindon Organic Farm Estate case study

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