The Government’s Clean Growth strategy may seem like bad news for off-grid rural care homes as they face phasing out heating oil in favour of lower carbon fuels.
The sector is already being squeezed by rising costs and local authority spending cuts – but a care home in the Cotswolds has shown the way to go greener and save money at the same time, working with LPG supplier AvantiGas.
Stinchcombe Manor is a family-run care home housed in a beautiful Grade II listed manor house, built in 1836 near Dursley, in the heart of the Cotswolds. But when Dominic Carden bought the home two years ago, four antiquated, inefficient and unreliable oil-fuelled boilers were among the many problems he inherited.
Chui Green, Technical Sales Manager at AvantiGas, worked closely with Mr Carden to deliver the solution that would strip out the outmoded oil boilers, replacing them with a clean, modern, lower-carbon LPG system. The package included all maintenance and required no up-front payment, yet repayments still came in lower than the previous fuel bills alone.
“It’s very difficult, in this day and age, to believe you can get the kind of deal that we’ve done,” said Mr. Carden. “Yes, obviously I am paying for it (the capital cost) over a period of time but yes – it was difficult to work out that I didn’t have to find the initial outlay straightaway. If I’d have had to do that, I probably wouldn’t have had it done this year.”
Mr Carden is repaying the capital costs of the new system with its three boilers, three one-tonne LPG tanks and pipework, over the 10-year contract period as part of his regular fuel payments, with a maintenance contract included in the overall monthly price. The total still came in below what he was paying before just for fuel.A break-out clause in the bespoke agreement also gives Mr Carden the option to pay off the capital cost early if he’d prefer to.
There was no doubt that the care home’s unreliable and inflexible heating and hot water system was long past its best: “The previous system was really old – I wouldn’t ever switch the oil boilers off, because the company that used to service and maintain them said: ‘Don’t switch them off, because they’re so old and dilapidated you might not get them going again.’”
He also had to keep the central heating boilers on all-year-round to provide hot water, as separating the two applications was not possible: “It was not at all good for economy – especially in the summer. I had to keep them going full blast. But hopefully this is going to be a major improvement for us.”
The three modern LPG boilers are now installed in one central boiler house – the old oil boilers were spread across three locations – and are linked in a ‘cascade’ format so that when the heat requirement is low, particularly in the summer, just one boiler can do all the work and there’s no longer a colossal waste of unwanted heat.
The new set-up also powers ovens and tumble driers which were previously fuelled by LPG cylinders. Mr Carden no longer has to find storage space for cylinders, bulk gas is cheaper too, and he doesn’t have to think about when to order fuel as his tanks are topped up automatically:
“I’m really pleased with the way things have gone, really happy. It was a major job but it’s running well now and everybody is seeing the improvements that I’m making. And hopefully come summer I’ll see even more benefits because I’ll be able to switch my boilers off and regulate it much more.”
Chui Green of AvantiGas said the new system would be better for Stinchcombe’s residents as well as for its owner: “Selecting a more efficient fuel or upgrading the boiler ensures cheaper running costs – all the more important when budgets are squeezed and the cost of delivering quality healthcare is going up. Controlling running costs enables the home to be more competitive while improving the comfort of its residents.
“With care homes, the need for consistent, comfortable and controllable heat is paramount, because of the vulnerability of the residents. And with off-grid homes in older or listed buildings it’s often harder to ensure efficiency due to factors such as solid walls, limited insulation etc.
“Stinchcombe Manor is now ahead of the game, having converted from a high-carbon fuel that is on its way out to a cleaner, more economical, lower-carbon system that promises to serve them effectively far into the future.”
To contact AvantiGas Technical Sales Manager Chui Green, call her on 07718 602841 or email chui.green@avantigas.com
