Village heaters introduce themselves

Created: 02/08/2022, 02:00 p.m

Georg Miller shows the sliding floor that reliably transports wood chips into the oven in his Leibersberg village heating system.

© EWO

Region - On Saturday, January 22nd, four operators of village heating systems in the Oberland opened their doors.

Interested imitators could ask questions about planning, construction and operation and received practical tips.

The action took place in cooperation between deputy state farmer Christine Singer from Hofheim and the EU-financed heating exchange project REPLACE from Energiewende Oberland.

In Antdorf, Johann Schweyer sen.

already cleared the snow on the way to the boiler house.

Inside you can see the village heating system, which has been reliably supplying four houses with a total of twelve households with heat since 2009.

What motivated you to build?

How do the operators monitor their systems?

And what tips are there for imitators?

In addition to the Schweyer family, operators from Habach (Strobl and Kennerknecht families), Leibersberg (Georg Miller) and Hofheim (Singer family) took part in the campaign and answered questions.

All four village heating families have farms and are also active as heat suppliers for the neighboring houses.

Like Josef Schweyer Jr.

reported from Antdorf, they can bring in their own wood for the woodchip heating system and thus also achieve added value for their own business.

The reason for the construction of the system in Antdorf was the planning of further buildings in the same street and thus the idea of ​​a common heat supply.

For the Singer family in Hofheim, it was the thought of old age and the desire to use a simpler heating technology than split logs.

In conversation with the neighbors, the village heating for everyone came about by chance.

And for Markus Kennerknecht from Habach, the advantage of communal heating is clear:

The newest member of the village heating association is Georg Miller.

As a long-standing fuel supplier with the Bäuerliche Holzschnitzel Liefergesellschaft, his own village heating system went into operation in September 2021 after only five months of construction and now supplies the hamlet of Leibersberg.

The technical sophistication of his system is the sliding floor, with which the wood chips are fed into the furnace via a moving floor and thus make ideal use of the long storage space.

The experienced operators agree on their recommendations for imitators: A good planning office is important, which can lead through the project from the right size of the boiler to the route planning.

And, of course, capable heating engineers are required to successfully implement the project.

The Oberland Energy Transition is always up to date with regard to information on funding and can thus create optimal framework conditions for operators.

The involvement of a neutral partner such as EWO is also clever when it comes to pricing, then the envy factor doesn't even come into play.

All operators answered with a resounding yes as to whether they would build their village heating system a second time.

Or as Josef Schweyer from Antdorf says: “Village heating is not rocket science.

It goes well with the farm and is recommended for others with a similar challenge.”