Leven Valley Church of England Primary School’s 30.12kW ground source heat pump

Situated within the Lake District National Park, Leven Valley Church of England Primary School, with just over 60 pupils, has become the first school to use Salix funding to install a 30.12kW ground source heat pump.  

Over the last decade, the school has demonstrated an exemplar commitment to the reduction of carbon across their estate to create a thermally efficient building, ready for the decarbonisation of heat. 

Where possible, the school made use of natural and sustainable building materials and approaches, taking a cold, damp and inhospitable building and transforming it into a warm and welcoming learning environment.  

The next step of the school’s carbon reduction strategy was to tackle their heating, upgrading from an oil-based system to a 30.12kW borehole ground source heat pump (GSHP). Despite their old building, Leven Valley’s existing efficiency measures such as insulation, solar PV and LED lighting replacements have made the installation of their GSHP possible.  

In this case, a GSHP was the most robust, long-term approach for minimising carbon emissions and was an ideal replacement for the school's oil-based heating system. The GSHP can access online weather and climate data, track heat usage and monitor solar electricity generation to optimise the system's efficiency, keeping costs to a minimum and maximising the use of renewable energy.  

Ian Nicol, Headteacher at Leven Valley Church of England Primary School, said: “The buildings have become part of our educational ethos, values and provision and work in sympathy with our location within the Lake District National Park. We are a very small school, but I hope you can see that we think big and we act green.” 

The project will see substantial savings, reducing the school’s carbon emissions by 77% and £5,110 per year.