Green Network for Businesses

Gold winner of a Green Tourism Award in March 2019, Kirkennan Estate Holiday Cottages lies to the south of Dalbeattie, near Castle Douglas in Dumfries and Galloway. The estate consists of 35-acres of formal lawns, woodland and walled garden, with a main house and three self-catering cottages called Woodsedge, the Mews and the Lodge. There is also a barn which houses the central biomass boiler. This provides heat to the majority of the buildings, except the Lodge cottage, which is heated by an air source heat pump.

Keen to reduce the carbon footprint of the Estate, the owners realised much needed to be done when they moved to Kirkennan in 2013. Reducing the estate’s carbon emissions has been their top priority since then and they are steadily making improvements whenever they have the resources available. One of the owners, Jenny Chapman, said “We believe that addressing Climate Change is THE issue of our time and that it is essential that governments, businesses and individuals all do their part.”

All of the cottages have well insulated roofs and stone walls, with internal wood strapping and plaster boarding. Woodsedge and the Mews have solid, insulated floors with electric underfloor heating, but the wooden floor in the Lodge is uninsulated .

During 2013 and 2014, the Kirkennan owners started replacing the faulty double glazed windows in one of the cottages, adding thermostatic valves on all radiators, and installing a district heating biomass system which supplies the majority of the buildings. They source the wood locally, which they season on site and get chipped directly into the hopper of the biomass, using a rented mobile chipper. 

In 2018, the owners accessed free Scottish-Government funded support from the service now known as Business Energy Scotland- for advice on how to improve the estate’s energy efficiency further. This support identified a few opportunities for Kirkennan estate to save energy and water, reduce carbon emissions, and save money along the way. 

On the back of these recommendations, the owners:

• replaced all lighting in the holiday cottages and the house with LED lighting and installed motion sensitive outdoor lights
• added insulation to the floor of one of the cottages and wall insulation to another one of the cottages
• replaced old inefficient appliances like fridge-freezer and washing machine with new A-rated ones
• installed reduced flow shower heads.

More recently in 2019, they replaced the open fire in one of the cottages with a DEFRA approved 81% efficient wood stove. Open fires are quite inefficient and can make the central heating less efficient when they’re not in use, as the heat will escape through the open chimney. Also, a modern efficient stove is better than an open fire from an air quality point of view.

The owners also installed solar panels on the roof of one of the cottages to provide power to the biomass district heating system, and in the field adjacent to another cottage to provide electricity there. These solar systems are estimated to save over 1,700kg of CO2 emissions a year.

Talking about the free support the business received, Jenny said that it helped the business to “navigate through the complexities of some of the options enabling me to go ahead and commission two sets of solar PV”.

The owners estimated the carbon footprint of the cottages using Green Tourism's Carbon calculator and intend to do this every year to track progress in reducing CO2 emissions and energy consumption. 

As well as installing energy efficiency improvement and renewable technology to improve their carbon footprint, the owners of Kirkennan Estate have also implemented best practice measures to save energy, water and waste, and actively contribute to the local economy. These include:

• Only washing towels when guests specifically ask for it, and air drying all laundry
• collecting rain water for use in the green-house
• re-using and upcycling items or materials for the cottages
• purchasing consumables like soaps and detergents in bulk and refillable containers, and choosing fair-trade where possible
• purchasing produce locally where possible, for example milk from a local dairy
• using local suppliers for services like logo and leaflet design, website hosting and artwork for the garden and cottages.

The Kirkennan Estate owners look to educate their guests on how to reduce their impact on the environment when staying at the Estate. They do this by:

• Encouraging guests to turn off lights when not in use, to adjust the heating using the radiator valves, to use eco-settings on appliances
• encouraging guests to recycle even though kerbside recycling is not yet available
• providing information on local buses and how to holiday without a car
• encouraging guests to shop locally, providing vouchers and information on local markets and specialities
• providing guests with a welcome pack of healthy seasonal produce from the Estate and encouraging them to make use of fresh herbs from the gardens. 

Kirkennan Estate is a place rich in habitats for birds and wildlife, with many mature trees. The owners are actively working to enhance the estate’s potential to support biodiversity and nature, and encourage their guests to appreciate the environment. You can find out more about this by visiting their website. 

The dedication and continuous commitment shown by Kirkennan Estate has been recognised and rewarded with a Green Tourism Gold Award in March 2019.

Kirkennan Estates spoke about using heat pumps at a Business Energy Scotland webinar in June 2022.