Hi - my name is Claire Hunter
I'm the director of the Marine Hotel in Ballycastle.
When we bought the building
we realised very quickly that
it's a very large space to heat
and that was going to be one of our main overheads.
We had to identify where to start
we had so many different areas that we knew
that we could improve this building.
We didn't have energy efficiency lighting but really,
heating a building of this size
was always going to be the priority.
The building was 25 to 30 years old
we had old windows, old doors, drafty roofs
burners and boilers that were 25 to 30 years old.
We had tanked hot water which is always a bit of a problem
whenever you have 80 guests in house and
everybody wants a shower on a Saturday night
before they go out.
You inevitably run out of hot water.
So we were relying on our handyman checking the level of oil
we had no automatic oil level check
so there was always a risk of running out of oil.
One of the main things for us when we were
assessing the new heating system was
we wanted to be able to zone it so that we
weren't heating the huge space whenever
only a small portion of it was being used.
We used mechanical and electrical
professional consultants to give us surveys
on the entire building and the heating system.
We also went to the Carbon Trust
and they were invaluable in giving us information
on the existing heating system but also on alternatives
that were out there in the marketplace.
The decision that we made was to change
to tanked gas because the price of gas
was better - it's much more efficient
so we no longer have tanked hot water
we have hot water on demand for all our
guests whenever we need it.
It is a zoned heating system so we have four different
zones within the hotel so we don't need
to heat the entire hotel at any one time
so that helps with the seasonality of the business.
We also have sensors outside the building that control
the general heating and keep everything at one temperature.
So when it comes to zoning the heating
in the business we have 31 bedrooms
which are split into zones of seven or eight rooms each
now that we can heat separately.
We also have the ballroom which has a massive high ceiling
it holds 400 people it's a very difficult area to heat
but now because we have the zoning
we don't have to heat it whenever it's not being used.
We can just heat the coffee area and the
lobby area and the restaurant, for example,
if those are the areas that we need to heat.
The overall investment was forty thousand pounds.
We got twelve thousand pounds of interest-free loan
over four years from the Carbon Trust.
It was invaluable to the business for
savings going forward and we are saving
over two thousand pounds a year.
I think if we were to do it again the
one big change that we would put a
further investment in and we would put
individual thermostats into every bedroom.
The system that we put in maintained
four different zones within the bedrooms.
I think we would put separate thermostats
into every bedroom and that would be able
to allow us to control every single bedroom
but at the time the money wasn't there to do that
and so that will be on the list for a later date.
My three main tips would be
1. Research your project properly and use consultants to research
2. See where the priorities lie to make your business more efficient, and
3. Get on and do it because all the time that you're not doing it you're wasting money