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The Brooklodge too the opportunity to go green when the decision was taken to expand the hotel in 2005.
Nevertheless, despite the understandable interest in the bottom line, it would not be true to say that Doyle doesn't take a keen interest in environmental issues. In fact, he has invested €42,000 in a composter for kitchen waste and all of the hotel's paper waste is recycled.
Joe Rooney of RN Murphy, consulting engineers who worked on the upgrade, explains that Doyle's interest in sustainability made his company's job much easier: "One of the things that was very useful from the consultants' point of view [is that] the client was very proactive in wanting a green hotel with a very efficient use of energy. He helped us lead the way."
According to Rooney, with the two new buildings in mind, continuing with the existing heating system would simply not have been a rational choice: "The hotel was originally designed with two traditional Calor Kosangas LPG [liquid petroleum gas] boilers—it would not have been efficient."
The systems that were chosen, geothermal and biomass, reflect a clear understanding of both the hotel's consumption needs and the engineering needed to complete the work: "The last extension that has been completed is a standalone building with conference rooms on the ground floor and bedrooms above. Because the building lies in an area with a high water table, we were able to fit the [geothermal] loop within the footprint of the building.
"The new building, a combination of bedrooms and a function room, will use geothermal and wood chip," he says.
Blowing hot and cold
The geothermal system was sourced from DC Compute Air. David Roome from the company says the energy cost savings with such systems are significant: "In terms of savings, you should expect, with geothermal, to see 70 per cent savings against oil," he claims.
However, Roome cautions against ill-conceived schemes and argues that successful installation requires meticulous planning: "How it's designed is the big issue. The heat pump is only the car's engine, so to speak.
"For instance, if you took an ordinary underfloor heating system, your pumping power could be twenty per cent. You could have 0.6 or 0.7 of a kilowatt going in on top of the [other] energy use," he says.
Despite this, Roome remains a champion of the technology: "A heat pump is about 450 per cent efficient where a boiler is about 70 per cent efficient.
"What we've done [in the Brooklodge] is, the actual geothermal loops are under the buildings' footprints. We've effectively created a pond from the springs.
"Under the bedroom block, there is about 2,000 metres of piping [twenty 200 metre-long loops] with a capacity of 57–60 kilowatts. The piping is buried in the gravel to allow the water to flow over it. The other building has 16,000 metres of piping with a capacity of 300 kilowatts.
"They're heating and cooling. During cooling, we discharge heat under the building and, in the heating mode, we take it up.
"Only the second building is backed-up by the wood chip boiler because the function centre is a major draw and the building still requires a lot of hot water," says Roome.
In this building geothermal energy supplies the air conditioning and cooling and a water-to-water heat pump provides heat for the domestic water and underfloor heating as well as heating the swimming pool. The wood chip burner supplies the kitchen and provides a failsafe backup.
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