REHAU supplies ideal heating solution for award-winning resort

When an award-winning resort in Dundee required a district heating programme, REHAU supplied the ideal solution.

Piperdam, just 10 minutes from Dundee, is a resort offering a number of self-catering lodges, as well as restaurant and leisure facilities on site.

Six years ago, Piperdam’s owners collaborated with a local installation company – Hydroscot Energies – on an energy strategy for the resort. Piperdam is off the mains gas grid and was reliant on expensive alternative fuels, such as LPG and Kerosene, so the owners were keen to find more sustainable and cost-efficient methods of heating the tens of holiday lodges located on the site.

For this project, Hydroscot Energies decided a series of district heating networks power by several large biomass boilers in conjunction with a Biogas Combined Heat and Power Plant (CHP) was most suitable. A phased programme of installations took place, starting with three networks to provide heating for 70 holiday lodges. Each network would be powered by a biomass boiler ranging between 200kw to 1MW. The main commercial complex complete with Swimming Pool, Spa, Gym, restaurants and bars was powered by the CHP.

To transfer the heat from the plant rooms to the lodges, Scott required pre-insulated pipework. As the lodges are spread across a large area, the pipe runs necessary were quite considerable in places, so he needed a product which would minimise heat losses as much as possible to ensure the efficiency of the system was upheld.

Scott Gaffney, owner of Hydroscot Energies, got in touch with UK-based REHAU about its pre-insulated pipe range and consequently specified RAUTHERMEX and RAUVITHERM pipework.

RAUTHERMEX is a PE-Xa pipe suitable for a variety of low carbon heat installations and featuring high performance PU foam, which makes it ideal for large district heating installations over long distances where minimising heat losses is critical. Scott specified the RAUTHERMEX for the spine of the district heating installation at Piperdam, taking the heat directly from the biomass plant room towards the lodges.

RAUVITHERM pipework was then used to transfer the heat from the RAUTHERMEX pipe to individual lodges. RAUVITHERM is also suitable for use in district heating, biomass, biogas and heat pump applications, and is currently the only PE-Xa district heating pipe manufactured in the UK, which saves an estimated 29% on Co2 emissions annually. Overall, REHAU allows an abundance of heat to be delivered to each lodge in the most efficient way.

In addition, REHAU was chosen for an underfloor heating project also carried out under the energy strategy works. Seven kilometers of REHAU pipework was fitted to provide underfloor heating in the resort’s newly built activity centre.

Steve Richmond, Head of Marketing and Technical at REHAU, said: “District heating is growing in popularity and can be used for many different applications to provide energy efficient heat to multiple end users. It was a great choice for the Piperdam project, as its unobtrusive for guests and can be cost-effectively added to over time as more lodges are built.”

Contact:

REHAU
Hill Court,
Walford,
Ross on Wye,
Herefordshire,
HR9 5QN

Email address: [email protected]
Tel: 01989 72600

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