Aberhall Farm

Aberhall Farm is a large chicken farm, comprising of six sheds heated with warm water underfloor heating and hot water overhead heaters. Creating this heat are six 200kW biomass boilers, with LPG back-up. Each boiler earns between £20,000 and £25,000 in RHI payments per year.

Biomass creates an indirect, dry heat that has the potential to greatly improve the chicken’s Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR). The space in which the birds inhabit is also more uniform, with heat distributed evenly and litter noticeably drier and more friable. All this adds up to healthier chickens; mortality is much lower, ammonia levels are reduced and there are fewer cases of common barn hen health problems, such as hock burn and footpad dermatitis.

At Aberhall, Geberit Mapress stainless steel has been utilised exclusively in the chicken sheds to withstand the rust prone environment, with Mapress copper and carbon steel employed elsewhere. Traditionally, Geotek used screwed iron to connect its biomass systems, a cumbersome material that while robust took considerably more time to install.

John Dillon, Managing Director of Geotek, commented: “Geotek undertook training in Geberit Mapress and have never looked back. We’re extremely impressed with its ease of installation and now use it all the time – apart from for very heavy duty applications, it’s far better than the traditional alternatives. The biggest bonus is it’s light-weight and speed of installation. Geberit Mapress saves us considerable time on site, which is great for us but also keeps labour costs down for our customers.”

Proving its versatility with the latest renewable technologies (and unusual applications), pressing is increasingly becoming the choice of microgeneration installers, not just traditional heating and plumbing engineers. On a project like Aberhall, where overall cost savings are a key consideration, Geberit Mapress makes a significant contribution to a job’s bottom-line and the speed at which the customer (and its chickens) can realise the benefits of biomass.