Weobley Primary School

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Weobley School in Herefordshire is helping to raise the profile and promote the credibility of wood fuel for heating purposes. ESD worked in partnership with Hereford and Worcester Council as well as community stakeholders planned and implemented the first purpose built wood fuelled school at Woebley.

Here, with the twin objectives of assisting sustainable development and stimulating rural employment, and working with the Rural Development Commission (RDC) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), the County Council established the new primary school as a demonstration scheme incorporating:

• A heating system fuelled by locally grown wood


• High standards of energy efficiency


• Local building materials, wherever feasible

While the school was built from the council's normal budget, additional support for the heating system was received from European Regional Funding (£79,000, administered by MAFF), with matching funding from the RDC, the DTI under its New and Renewable Energy Programme and the County Council itself. The result was the installation of a 350kW wood-fired boiler which meets the primary school's base-load heating needs, as well as those of the existing secondary school on the adjoining site. An oil-fired system sited in the secondary school provides back-up for when the wood-fired system is undergoing maintenance. As well as meeting the need for heat, the system will play an important educational role in terms of helping the children to understand energy issues.

How It Works

For any project of this scale, securing a reliable supply of wood fuel is obviously a prerequisite. In the case of Weobley School, this was done by entering into a contract with the 7Y Machinery Ring in Leominster, 8 miles away. 7Y is a co-operative of more than 300 local farmers, labourers and agricultural contractors who meet each other's labour and machinery requirements, and has agreed to supply the school with 150-300 tonnes of wood chips a year. These chips will be derived from woodland thinnings and from willow and poplar short rotation forestry crops. Once harvested, the wood is allowed to dry on-site before being chipped prior to transportation to the school. Looking to the future, 7Y intends to supply wood chips to other local projects which emerge following the example being set at Weobley.

On arrival at the school, the chips are stored in a concrete silo built to receive the twice-weekly deliveries. Pushrods in the silo move the chips to the screws which take them up to the stoker, which in turn moves them to the burner head for combustion. The gases produced pass through the hot water boiler, and pumps move the heated water from the boiler to the school's underfloor heating system. Exhaust gases are cleaned prior to emission into the atmosphere via a low-level chimney. The small amount of ash produced by combustion and by the exhaust gas cleaning process is collected in an ash bin prior to use as fertiliser on the school garden.

The heating system, which was tested in the spring and is due to become fully operational this autumn, was supplied and installed by Nordist, now operating as Bioenergy Technology Ltd, based on equipment specifications defined by consultants from Energy for Sustainable Development.

Council engineers undertook a lot of the design work, and LRZ Bioenergy Systems provided advice on fuel source and quality. Routine cleaning and maintenance will be undertaken by the school's caretaker, with an annual maintenance inspection performed by Nordist. Due to its innovative and environmental dimension, the Weobley project was awarded first prize in the Engineering Council's 1997 Built Environment Innovation competition.