Case Study - Spa-ing partners
Ballyliffin Lodge’s dedication to preserving the area’s natural beauty, whilst transitioning to greener heating systems, brought together biomass boiler specialist CHP Mechanical Services and REHAU, who would provide bespoke underground pipework that could offer excellent thermal performance and protect aesthetics.
Ireland’s most northerly four-star hotel, the Ballyliffin Lodge and Spa, is nestled on Donegal’s Inishowen Peninsula. Its picturesque setting highlights the hotel’s dedication to preserving the area’s natural beauty, as further evidenced by its use of green technologies to supply heat, water and power to the establishment.
Steps taken to achieve this aim include installing a large 288kW solar array to the rear of the hotel and commissioning a natural spring well to reduce water usage and mains consumption. But Ballyliffin Lodge’s most ambitious projects involved upgrading its heating system to include a 500kW biomass boiler, burning woodchips to meet its heating and hot water needs.
Reducing carbon, reducing costs
Supported by a €450,000 investment and grants from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s Support Scheme for Renewable Heat, this project was crucial to the hotel’s goals of adopting greener practices and reducing operating costs. With Ireland’s carbon tax set to rise annually from €56 per tonne of CO2 at present, to €100 per tonne by 2030, installing a boiler that would save up to 250 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually made commercial sense.
Ballyliffin Lodge engaged the services of CHP Mechanical Services, a County Down based renewable energy and commercial heating installer specialising in biomass boiler installations including off-site prefabricated plant rooms. The need to preserve the peninsula’s pristine environment meant this expertise was a priority, as the existing building proposed to house the boiler was situated a kilometre away from the hotel – on the side of a nearby mountain.
The team at CHP Mechanical Services specified a Herz Firematic 499kW biomass boiler with a 50m³ adjoining space within the building from which woodchips are transferred via a spring agitator and screw conveyor. CHP Mechanical Services needed suitable underground pre-insulated pipework that could offer excellent thermal performance. With no roads going up the side of the mountain to the biomass boiler plant room, the specified pipework needed to be lightweight and flexible. A final requirement for the pipework was speed of installation to ensure there was minimal downtime while the changeover took place.
Enduring supply chain relationships
“The nature of Ballyliffin Lodge’s business and location presented clear challenges for this particular project,” says John Smyth, Managing Director of CHP Mechanical Services.
“We’ve been installing this kind of system for over 13 years, so we know the importance of only working with proven, reliable manufacturers for all components. We’ve had a long and solid relationship with REHAU, using its PE-Xa pipe, RAUTHERMEX, to connect off-site plantrooms to buildings. The team is very familiar with this pipe system and have always been impressed with its reliability, thermal performance and how easy it is to install.”
REHAU’s RAUTHERMEX bonded pipe system consists of a polyurethane foam insulation core and a corrugated outer jacket that keeps operational heat losses particularly low. Its fine-pored PU foam offers high thermal insulation, making it ideal for linking Ballyliffin Lodge’s buildings to the boiler plantroom.
RAUTHERMEX’s unique connection technology, EVERLOC, offered a level of ease of installation and reliability for CHP Mechanical Services. It uses a compression sleeve to create a permanently leak-tight connection between the pipe and the fitting, with no O-rings or other sealants, producing an independently certified cavity-free joint. As the pipe itself is the sealant, the installation is immediately ready for pressure.
Empowering businesses to go green
The success of Ballyliffin Lodge’s uniquely complex works has resulted in further enquiries from other hotels in Ireland, and as testament to the success of both this installation and that of the other green upgrades implemented, Ballyliffin Lodge was shortlisted as a finalist for the 2024 edition of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s Energy Awards.
“The CHP Mechanical Services team have clearly demonstrated what an excellent installation looks like in this field,” Mark Thompson, Area Sales Manager for REHAU Building Solutions Northern Ireland & Republic of Ireland, explains. “Using our leading RAUTHERMEX components, their expertise clearly demonstrates what’s possible even in remote areas such as the Inishowen Peninsula.”
