Crealy Theme Park & Resort

The Client

Crealy Theme Park & Resort is an award-winning family theme park. Set in the glorious East Devon countryside, it boasts over 60 rides and attractions, as well as spectacular live entertainment shows and animals.

Located just minutes off Junction 30 of the M5, Exeter and with free parking, the park has everything a family could want from a premier attraction in Devon.

Furthermore, voted the South West’s number one family day out 7 years running, the Park and its Resort is Devon’s biggest family theme park.

Crealy Theme Park & Resort offers the ultimate Devon family holiday. Accommodation ranges from touring and camping pitches to luxury glamping cabins. And of course, five-star luxury hot tub lodges.

Additionally, the huge indoor play areas and indoor attractions cover over 85,000sq. ft. That means fun whatever the weather.

The Challenge

Initially, IU Energy were asked to extend the biomass heat and hot water distribution system to an additional thirty lodges. Overall, this widespread requirement had complex heat-loss, metering and control challenges. Moreover, as a baseline figure, the owner stated the measured efficiency of the system was currently only 65%.

For these reasons, we concluded that not only was a cross-site improvement required, but also that administrating thirty additional heat meters would be difficult. Consequently, we recommended a centralised control system.

Additionally, to be ready in time for the first holiday arrivals to Crealy Theme Park & Resort, we scheduled an out-of-season installation.

The Solution

After extensive heat-loss calculations, IU Energy installed highly efficient underground pipe works of up to 200 metre runs to the lodges. Similarly, we installed a sophisticated remote-control and monitoring system. Along with other improvements to the existing plant, we then fitted a demand related variable volume and temperature system. This replaced the existing, inefficient constant volume and temperature set-up.

When it ultimately became apparent that Crealy now required a new method of measuring system performance, we made a successful application to OFGEM. IU Energy in-house specialists managed this and submitted the documentation on behalf of our client.

The Results

In summary, this far-reaching and complex project meant changes to distribution, control and metering. Nevertheless, Crealy Theme Park & Resort not only extended their existing plant capability to cover a widespread thirty-three buildings, but also saw the calculated system efficiency jumping from 65% to 95%. Overall, this caused a resultant uplift of 30% in RHI payments.

Finally, the improvements also reduced the operational burden, significantly.