As part of an expansion of the facilities at this veterinary surgery, a pellet boiler and solar thermal array now provide all the heating and hot water, replacing an oil-fired boiler that was very costly to operate.
We installed a 20 kW Froling PE1 pellet boiler and a pre-fabricated pellet store in an adjoining plant room. An 825 litre buffer tank is heated by both the pellet boiler and solar thermal collectors. The buffer tank has been indirectly connected to the existing vented heating and hot water system via a plate heat exchanger.
The new boiler is fuelled with wood pellets, fed via vacuum suction from a 4.7 tonne pellet store. The store was purpose-built which allowed us to maximise its capacity to allow more cost effective blown delivery of pellets. It is estimated that the store will need refuelling between 2 and 3 times a year.
Pellet consumption is offset from spring through to autumn by a solar thermal collector array consisting of 20 south-facing and 60 east-facing tubes connected to twin coils in the buffer store.
