Sustainability at Black Hall Lodges
At Black Hall we have always sought to manage both the Farm and the Lodges in an environmentally friendly way. This has become more important than ever now with the increasing concern over global warming.
Holidaying in the United Kingdom is a great start to your low carbon break. You will have arrived by car rather than aeroplane, and many of our guests will have travelled less than 100 miles to get here. Please see the following things that we have invested in, which ensure that your holiday is as enjoyable as possible while having a very low impact our environment.
Biomass Boiler
At Black Hall Lodges we made our first commitment to running the site sustainably in 2009. We installed our first biomass boiler burning wood chip and to provide all the heating and hot water for the newly built Leisure Building, swimming pool and all the lodges.
We use home grown timber coppiced from woodland, hedgerows and stream side trees, supplemented by cordwood timber. All are bought from within a 30mile radius, and unsuitable for higher grade timber products. We chip the smaller timber ourselves and have a contractor in to chip the larger diameter cord wood.
The hot water is carried around the site in a network of underground heat main, known as a district heating system. We currently have 630 metres serving 12 Lodges, 4 houses and the Leisure building.
In spring 2023 we upgraded our boiler to a 250 KW Froling, and in Autumn 2023 we extended the district to heat the seven VIP Lodges that were heated by LPG.
Solar Panels
Black Hall Leisure took the decision to install a large solar array on some of the adjacent farm shed roofs in Spring of 2022. The electricity produced supplements requirements for the twelve larger lodges as well as the Leisure Building. The system has now been running for twelve months and has produced 76,000KWH equating to about 40% of our annual usage.
Air Source Heat Pumps
Large consumers of electric are the Hot tubs installed on all the lodges. We know how much guests enjoy these, so we are currently investing in more energy efficient ways to heat them. We now have over half of the tubs heated by either air source heat pumps or heat exchangers.
We are also investigating Charging points for electric cars, as our next offer for sustainability, and will install these as demand dictates.