The ground source heat pump at Croome helps to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. This eliminates journeys made by fuel delivery tankers, the risk of spillage and the emissions made by burning fossil fuels.
For every unit of electricity used by the system, we are getting around 4.5 units of heat out and into the house.
While this electricity is partly generated using fossil fuels, the emissions from a large power station are greatly reduced per unit, compared to those of our old oil boilers.
So how does it work?
Ground source heat pumps work by absorbing energy from the soil and transferring it into a building to heat it without the need of using fossil fuels.
At Croome we have a large ‘ground-loop’, a network of pipes approximately 6kms long, under an area of the south park. These pipes are filled with a mixture of water and antifreeze which absorbs the heat from the ground as it is circulated around the system. The average ground temperature in the United Kingdom during summer and winter is around 10 to 11 degrees Celcius.