I made my first visit down to Dyffryn Gardens after the Christmas break to have a look see how things were coming along.

First off was a look at the heating project where we are replacing the ageing and inefficient oil boilers which supply conservation heat to the mansion. Quite apart from the removal of 10,000 litres of stored heating oil at any one time from the property; the age of the boilers meant the property were spending upwards of £1000 a month on  maintenance and breakdown call-outs.The heat main is now all connected from the plant room in the Gardeners tractor shed, all the way down to the mansion boiler house where a new heat exchanger is joining the heat main to the mansion. The connections in the new plant room are almost complete, and the new wood pellet fuel hopper is in and connected.

All connected up. The old oil boilers will be removed once the new system “goes live”

Commissioning scheduled for the 18th January. That will mean a 6 week construction period (more like a month taking into account Christmas shutdown).The work does not stop there though:

Nursery polytunnel

We are finalising costings for the integration of solar panels that will assist in meeting the electrical needs of the nursery, such as the poly-tunnel where current electric heaters are in place (I feel an air source heat pump coming along in the near future).

Property staff are also working through energy efficiency measures to lower the energy load at the property, with stunning chandelier’s like this one soon to be benefiting from LED.