Silversprings luxury without costing the Earth
At Silversprings, we pride ourselves on providing an enjoyable stay for our guests in glorious Devon. We also pride ourselves in taking every step to being sustainable, so that your luxurious stay will not cost the earth. For years, we have continuously driven down our energy and water use, sourced local food (and not wasted any!) and reduced and recycled everything possible. As a result, we have massively reduced our impact upon our environment, so that hopefully, Devon will continue to be green and beautiful forever. This is how we're doing it…
Laundry
When we started the hotel, we decided to do as much laundry in-house as possible, so upon advice, we purchased a large top-loading commercial washing machine. Due to the volume of laundry, we still had to send much of it out to a local laundrette. One day, we decided to measure the water and energy consumption. We were shocked to find that it used over a tonne of hot and cold water per day and huge amounts of electricity. We then found that top loading washing machines were exempt from the water and energy rating scheme and were known to have appalling efficiency!
We investigated alternatives on the internet and decided to buy a domestic AAA+ rated domestic front-loading washing machine with a 1600rpm spin. The results were simply amazing. The water consumption was reduced by two thirds, the electricity use halved and the amount of washing detergent also halved. With the reduced cycle times and the dryness of the washing due to the high spin speed, we are able to do all of the hotels laundry in-house, eliminating the need to transport our laundry around Exeter. Our gas dryer use was reduced, resulting in further reductions in energy and maintenance costs which has resulted in an overall operating cost saving of 70%.
These astonishing water and energy savings made us study every other area of the hotel to see how much we were wasting elsewhere. The results were shocking but gave us huge motivation to become energy efficient and sustainable. Fortunately, the huge savings made from the laundry allowed us to promptly fund all of the improvements. Our next stage with the laundry is to devise a way of re-using the washing machine rinse water as the washing water for the next cycle. This will save even more water…
Water Saving
Spurred on by the huge savings made by the washing machine, we looked at the rest of the hotel. We had a free Water Audit from South West Water who identified a range of improvements that we could make. These included putting aerated taps on the basins which mix air into the water, giving a soft, foamy flow with very low water use. The showers were fitted with flow adjusters so that they all used the same amount of water irrespective of which floor they were on, and aerated shower heads installed to give a vibrant shower with little hot water. The toilets were fitted with dual flush mechanisms and water displacement bottles fitted to reduce the flush to a maximum of 6 litres. Delayed action filling valves were fitted so that the cistern does not try to refill whilst it is flushing. We also found that the downstairs toilet consumed over 10% of the total water used in the hotel, so we made a rainwater harvesting system to collect water from the roof, garden and car park and we use this water to flush the toilet, to keep the wildlife pond topped up and to automatically irrigate our garden at night. This is detailed below…
Rainwater Harvesting
It is so wasteful to just allow all that free rain to run into the drain, then buy highly processed drinking water to flush toilets, water the garden and wash the car. The more that we looked into this, the worse the situation appeared. As more area is concreted over, the more drainage is required to transport this water straight into rivers. Whereas once the water would soak into the ground and slowly make its way into the water table, it now races straight into the rivers, causing sudden rises in the water level and helping to cause the horrific flooding we've seen frequently recently. We learned that SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems), part of the Environment Agency, is heavily promoting the immediate containment of storm water and the subsequent gradual release over time, ideally for this water to undertake some useful role, such as for toilet flushing, irrigation or for washing cars.
We decided to design a low cost rainwater harvesting system to collect our roof run-off. The first stage was to determine how much rain we could expect month by month and we gained this information from the Environment Agency. Using published information regarding roofing materials and angles, we identified that we needed some 2000 litres of storm water capacity. Rather than to buy a new tank, we sourced two scrap 1000 litre IBCs (intermediate bulk containers) which were originally used to convey wine in bulk. We coupled these together and installed an outlet filter and pipe work to the downstairs toilet. We modified the gutters and downpipes to convey the rainwater to the tanks and installed a sump-pump in the garden to collect the surface run-off water and pump it into the tanks. At this point we had no run-off to drain and South West Water correspondingly reduced our water bills to remove the surface run-off element of the sewerage charge.
The next stage was to identify a way of discharging any excess water in case of severe weather, so a large soak-away was built under the car park. This allows any excess storm water to slowly soak into the ground, eventually finding its' way to the water table, just as it used to happen before hard-surfacing.
During normal operation, the rainwater is used to flush the downstairs toilet and some 200 litres of drinking water are saved every day in this way. That is the same amount as the average person drinks in two months! When the garden is dry, a rainwater sensor runs an irrigation pump (an old central heating pump) which automatically waters the garden at midnight. This operates all year round and we have only run out of rainwater once for a few days during an exceedingly dry period. We are now happy when it is sunny (for the solar panel, below) and also when it rains! Our next steps are to use rainwater for the remainder of the toilets in the hotel, but this is a large undertaking as it requires a re-plumb, so this will be incorporated as bathrooms are refurbished.
Central Heating & Hot Water
Like some 5 million other buildings in the UK, the hotel had an old "G" rated boiler to heat the hotel and the hot water. We tested the efficiency to find that only just over half of the gas used was actually heating the hotel and water, the rest was heating the environment! We spent some weeks undertaking a "whole house sizing" to determine just how much heating and hot water was required to keep the hotel warm and comfortable and generated a plan to minimise energy use. Surprisingly, the new boiler would be much smaller than the original as it had been oversized and was so inefficient. We quickly identified that just simply installing a state-of-the-art gas condensing boiler was only one part of the jigsaw. Vitally important other parts were efficient controls, correctly sized radiators, insulation (pipework and the building) and the implementation of renewables (solar). We produced a specification, sourced the equipment and undertook the installation over the Christmas shut-down.
We chose a 46kW Vaillant Ecomax condensing system boiler with weather compensation, so that as the weather gets warmer (and so less heating is required), the radiators get cooler, allowing the boiler to remain in full condensing mode for longer, saving considerable amounts of gas. Many of the radiators were changed to match the heating requirements of each room and a thermostatic radiator valve fitted to each radiator to prevent over-heating or under-heating of each room. Provision was made for the subsequent addition of a solar panel during the spring. All accessible pipe work was heavily lagged and the new hot water cylinders (with factory provided insulation) were further insulated. All loftspaces were heavily lagged to a minimum of 300mm and doors, windows and loft hatches draught-proofed. Taps and showers were converted to water-efficient aerating types, to reduce the amount of hot water required (more about this below). Again, the results were incredible. The temperature throughout the hotel became considerably more even and comfortable, and we never ran out of hot water. The gas consumption dropped by an amazing 40%, so with escalating gas prices, the contribution to our environmental improvement budget was considerable, allowing the solar panel to be funded directly from the gas savings. Our next aim is to install a combined heat and power (CHP) system so that we generate our own electricity and sell off any surplus during peak times to the grid. The waste heat from this micro generation will be used to heat the hotel and the hot water, with the boiler being used when little electricity is required or during peak demands.
Solar Panel
Hotels have very large hot water use, partly due to the commercial kitchen and cleaning activities, but mainly due to running baths and showers. We researched into high quality showers with minimal water use to try to encourage guests to take showers rather than baths. This policy has helped to minimise hot water use and therefore gas consumption. To further reduce gas consumption, we researched into the use of a solar hot water system. We found that for our environment, evacuated solar tubes would be perfect and would fit the roof area aesthetically. Following planning permission (the hotel is a grade II listed building), we installed the panel using an ingenious direct water heating method, which uses just 2W (less energy than a night light) of additional electricity to operate. This has resulted in the boiler being switched off all day from late spring to early autumn, which not only saves lots of gas but also prolongs the boiler life and reduces the maintenance and servicing costs. With current gas prices and the ease of connecting the panel into the hot water system, the payback is some six years - a far better return than from a bank and far better for the environment!
Electrical Savings
Electrical use in the UK has seen a year-on-year increase and reversing this is very difficult, despite the improvement in energy efficiency of appliances. We just have so many electricity using appliances now, compared with even a decade ago. We looked at every aspect of the hotel to see what could be achieved…
Lighting
We found that lighting was the most obvious focus due to the availability of high quality, long-life low energy lamps. Whilst it was simple to change the lighting in the stairways, office, kitchen, lounge, breakfast and external areas to energy efficient equivalents, it was more difficult to change the lighting in the guests rooms due to their slow brighten-up times. Finally we decided to change every lamp to low energy versions as we believe that guests can see the bigger picture and are getting more used to this issue as more and more lights are being changed to energy efficient alternatives in the home.
We chose compact florescent lamps throughout with the exception of the downstairs toilets and some en-suite bathrooms where even more efficient, very long life LED lighting is used. With time, LED lighting will become sufficiently bright for use throughout the hotel and these will be implemented as soon as that time arrives, expected within the next two years.
Appliances
All appliances are now "A" rated, including the washing machine, fridge, freezer boiler and controls, LCD TVs and DVD players (with rechargeable batteries in the remote controls). Our dryer runs on natural gas and we extract any residual heat from the flue gas into a drying cupboard. Each guest room is equipped with a low water volume kettle, ideal for boiling small quantities of water quickly and efficiently. Proper hairdryers are used, which despite having a high power output, still consume the same overall power without taking hours for guests to dry their hair. We have no inefficient and wasteful electric showers, instead all run from hot water produced by our state-of-the art gas condensing boiler or solar panel.
We have three computers, one for the office, one to run the wifi and one for guest use in the lounge. These are all Tranquil PCs with zero carbon footprint with high efficiency LCD monitors, running with energy minimisation software which results in a 90% energy saving over conventional PCs. We use an Eco-Kettle to minimise electricity use by ensuring only the water required is boiled. Our vacuum cleaners are all Henry Eco Friendly versions with a 50% energy saving and 20% less noise. The hoover bags are then composted with kitchen waste (tea bags, coffee grindings etc.) and garden waste. Our cooker is fully gas to minimise our carbon footprint.
Recycling
Without recycling facilities in Exeter, we just used to throw everything into landfill which was quick and easy, but wasteful and expensive. Recycling in Exeter is much better these days and it is very motivating that Exeter City Council has got this right. It is easy to forget that recycling is not the only option for reducing landfill. In fact it is actually the last resort before landfill. Even more important are the Rethink, Reduce and Reuse options which precede Recycle. We paid particular option to the rethink option - is the product or service actually required in the first place? A great example of this is bottled water. We used to provide some 4000 bottles of water per year to guests, the vast majority of which would be partly consumed and the bottles left at the hotel for disposal. Faced with this huge waste of plastic and the thought of the amount of oil and energy which would have been needlessly used in their manufacture and transporting around the country, we looked for alternatives. We chose to use reusable swing-top lid glass bottles with treated and filtered mains water. These have reduced our plastic waste to near zero (our local farm which provides us with fresh milk reuse the milk containers, our only other significant plastic use area). We have re-thought our cleaning products and use no chemical-based cleaners, which helps the environment, your health and our associates health. We have also looked at every product to determine whether these can be reduced (such as a 50% reduction in washing powder) or re-used (milk containers and wine bottles). All remaining waste is sorted into waste streams to add value, weighed, recorded and recyclable items are collected for processing, such as newspapers, cardboard and tetra packs (from fruit juice). All our locally sourced food is freshly cooked to order, so there is very little waste, but if there is any, it is weighed and composted. As a result, we have reduced our landfill by 94% by weight and continue to drive down waste. Our aim is to further reduce our landfill, but this is very dependent upon our guests!
The Building
We are proud to have a wonderful Georgian grade II listed building for the hotel, with its period characteristics. Whilst these buildings were constructed to last with their thick cob and Heavitree stone construction, they are not particularly energy efficient with their draughty single-glazed sash windows. We have undertaken every action allowed by Exeter City Council, whose Listed Building department have no regard for our environment. As a result, the single glazed wooden sash windows have to be replaced with new single glazed wooden sash windows, despite other councils allowing the use of conservation grade double glazing. Even the National Trust has stated that if we do not preserve our environment, we may not be able to preserve our delicate heritage buildings. Still, we have done everything that we have been allowed to do, including draught proofing doors, windows and loft hatches, maximising loft insulation, employing heavy lined curtains to minimise window heat loss, installing door closers on every door and a myriad of small, but important changes to help reduce our energy use. We ensure that unused lights are turned off when not in use, that the building is not heated when we are airing it in the mornings and that the heating is turned off in rooms which are not being occupied.
How do we know that we're improving?
We measure everything that is important to our environmental performance every day at 15:00 and we've being doing this for years. These measurements are recorded in our Business Information System so that we can immediately identify any problems, such as a running toilet creating a high water use and so that we can check that we are progressing in the right direction. What we have found is that we have reduced our water consumption by a whopping 46%, our overall gas usage by a huge 35% and our electricity usage by a respectable 11% in the last four years. We are delighted with the efforts made by our associates and guests, but the real results are even better than these. We are now busier than we have ever been and this higher level of occupancy consumes more water and energy. Also, had we taken the "do nothing" option, our consumption of these resources would be typically 10% higher than four years ago if we had increased at the same rate as the rest of the UK! However, there is no room for complacency and whilst we aim towards being sustainable, as a hotel and as a nation, we are still far, far away from it. The environment is changing and Devon is experiencing more extreme weather. It would be such a desperate shame if this beautiful, tranquil part of the world loses its charm. Therefore, we are redoubling our efforts to reduce our use of fossil fuels, to eliminate piling rubbish into landfill sites and to try to live as harmoniously with nature as we can on this delicate Earth.
Please help us by doing your best to help our environment. Please walk or use public transport wherever possible - we're always willing to help plan your routes. Please turn off any lights and appliances that you are not using. Please take short showers instead of baths. Please re-use towels to reduce the water and energy used in laundering them. And always turn off the tap whilst you're brushing your teeth! The cherry on the cake would be if you also applied all of this to your everyday life.
Finally, please always stay in Green Tourist Business Scheme assessed establishments so you know that every action has already been taken to make sure that your stay will not cost the Earth.