Sickleholme golf club near Bamford in Derbyshire.

Sickleholme golf club made the decision to install an RTB pellet heating system in June 2014. The existing heating system was run on natural gas but consisted of several separate heating systems throughout the clubhouse building with 5 gas boilers in total.

Aspire Eco Energy designed the system so they had a central boiler room with primary heating circuits installed through the building to supply heat to all of the existing heating systems. The existing gas boilers where then removed and either replaced with plate heat exchangers or the systems were supplied direct from the primary system.

The boiler room contains 3 RTB50 pellet boilers built by NBE Productions in Denmark and supplied to Aspire by RTB-UK Ltd. RTB-UK are the UK’s distribution partner for NBE Productions.

The boilers operate as a cascade and is controlled and monitored though NBE’s cloud based control system, Stokercloud. This allows the system to modulate between 5kW and 138kW, boilers are turned on or off as the demand on the system alters. This means there is no need for large buffer cylinders, the neutral point in the system is a 50 litre low loss header between the boilers and the heating primaries.

A 15 tonne pellet silo was installed at the rear of the clubhouse and clad in Siberian Larch so that it blends in with the surroundings. RTB vacuum systems are used to transport the fuel to the boilers.