Greetham Valley Golf Course spends considerable time and effort on investigating viable and sustainable ways to reduce their carbon footprint.

They have installed a biomass boiler powered by woodchip, some of which is produced onsite from their own coppiced trees. To make that possible the Club purchased a GreenMech ChipMaster 220 wood chipper.


The GreenMech ChipMaster 220 at Greetham Valley Golf Club

Greetham Valley Hotel, Golf Course and Conference Centre is set amidst beautiful Rutland countryside, minutes away from the tranquil Rutland Water Nature Reserve. This two 18 hole championship golf course, and 9 hole par 3 academy golf course, is set in 276 acres. Originally farmland, owner Robert Hinch has transformed the area byplanting 25,000 treesover the last 25 years, which is in addition to the 10 acres of original woodland that was there.

With so much need for maintenance and thinning out of the trees Robert decided on an in house system using their own wood chipper. The resultant chipped wood could then feed a massive, and very clever, boiler to provide heat and hot water for their Lounge Bar, restaurants and Club changing rooms as well as their 35 bedroom hoteland all eight of their Rutland Lodges.

For tackling a really big job such as this, Robert settled on the ChipMaster 220 with its 220mm chipping capacity. Engineered with a 50hp Isuzu water-cooled diesel engine it has a unique patented Disc-Blade chipping system to ensure a constant chip quality. It has a 1100mm x 800mm infeed chute, coupled with an infeed throat opening of 230mm x 230mm to enable branches to be easily and quickly processed. The spring-tensioned twin hydraulic feed rollers are controlled by the electronic No-Stress system and crush woody material to give effective throughput management of up to 7 tonnes per hour.

"We didn't try any other chippers," says Robert, "because we knew the make to be a quality product and it produced the chip we were after. All of my eight greenkeeping staff are impressed with it and find it very easy to use. Any chippings that we can't use in the boiler are used for mulching round trees. It is very multifunctional."