Sometime in mid-June, my friend messaged me that he knew someone who knew the entry into this supposedly abandoned heating plant. I've had it on my map for two or three years, and nothing indicated it was still operational. No coal next to it for a good few years and no license to operate - it seemed pretty clear-cut to me. For some reason, there were no photos posted from it. So one weekend, I freed up a Sunday and met up with two other guys to explore the plant.
The heating plant started operating in the 1980s, and for most of its service life, it was a backup for a large power plant nearby. Then at some point, it became uneconomical to fire up the coal boilers for short periods of time (not to mention all the maintenance costs), and the decision to replace it with a small gas-fired heating plant was made. The plant went offline in the 2010s. I got info about it still being test-fired from time to time from people I know who live in the area - which is weird since it does not have a license to operate, but who knows what's going on. The plant has three boilers - one smaller one and two larger ones. Only two of them were licensed to operate, but maybe in the past, all three were actively used. No turbine, sadly.
As for our exploration - high temperatures, tons of sweat, and shit light. The entry we got was good. The problem was the administrative building next to the heating plant, which was still in use. When we got inside, we found out that there was a break room directly connected to the boiler house and that the workers from the administrative building used it to make coffee - the sound of a spoon making contact with a porcelain cup made that abundantly clear. We carried on, hoping we'll be quiet enough not to alert anyone to our presence. We were successful, but it was the quietest explore of my urbex career. In total, we spent good two hours there. The skies were clear, the day was sunny, and the boiler house had large windows, so I struggled a bit to make the photos usable.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading
The heating plant started operating in the 1980s, and for most of its service life, it was a backup for a large power plant nearby. Then at some point, it became uneconomical to fire up the coal boilers for short periods of time (not to mention all the maintenance costs), and the decision to replace it with a small gas-fired heating plant was made. The plant went offline in the 2010s. I got info about it still being test-fired from time to time from people I know who live in the area - which is weird since it does not have a license to operate, but who knows what's going on. The plant has three boilers - one smaller one and two larger ones. Only two of them were licensed to operate, but maybe in the past, all three were actively used. No turbine, sadly.
As for our exploration - high temperatures, tons of sweat, and shit light. The entry we got was good. The problem was the administrative building next to the heating plant, which was still in use. When we got inside, we found out that there was a break room directly connected to the boiler house and that the workers from the administrative building used it to make coffee - the sound of a spoon making contact with a porcelain cup made that abundantly clear. We carried on, hoping we'll be quiet enough not to alert anyone to our presence. We were successful, but it was the quietest explore of my urbex career. In total, we spent good two hours there. The skies were clear, the day was sunny, and the boiler house had large windows, so I struggled a bit to make the photos usable.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading
