Anyone who rescues a manor with 99 rooms soon learns: the romance lives in the Mirror Hall – the truth lives in the cellar. Down there, among fieldstone foundations from 1868, what may be our boldest dream for 2026 is taking shape this year: Schloss Gültz is to be warm again under its own steam.
A heart of steel for a house of stone
The future centrepiece is ready and waiting: an ETA log gasification boiler with an output of up to 50 kilowatts – Austrian boiler engineering, made for exactly this kind of task. A wood gasifier does not simply burn logs; it transforms them in two stages: first the wood releases its gases, then the wood gas burns almost completely at high temperatures – efficiently, cleanly and with a flame more reminiscent of a jet engine than a campfire.
It also needs a good memory for heat: around 4,500 litres of buffer storage are to absorb the energy of each firing and release it into the house over hours. Fire it up once a day and physics does the rest – that is how you heat a listed monument without becoming its slave.
And best of all: the fuel grows right outside the door. Our part of the park and our own woodland supply what the boiler needs with every round of maintenance pruning and every storm – warmth from our own park, short distances, no fossil detours.
And a Bullerjan for the library
The second dream is smaller, but no less lovely: a Bullerjan hot-air stove is to move into the library in the north wing – that legendary Canadian stove with the curved pipes, originally developed by lumberjacks who wanted to get warm quickly in the evening. Cold air flows into the pipes at the bottom, warm air pours out at the top, and within minutes the room is warmed through.
Just imagine: outside, a grey November day over the Lenné park; inside, the crackle of the stove, a book from the old shelves, an armchair – a winter’s day needs nothing more. Naturally, all of this will be done in agreement with the chimney sweep and in line with today’s requirements – that, too, is part of the truth of a listed monument.
Why we are telling you this
Because warmth is more than technology. A house that can be heated is a house that can be lived in, a hall that can host events, a suite with a future – and the difference between a monument that hibernates and a monument that lives. Every step of the restoration ultimately aims at this one moment: that the scent of wood fire fills the air here again and the windows glow from within in winter.
Will the dream come true in 2026? We are working on it. And if not this winter, then the next – a house that has waited 150 years is in no hurry. But it knows the difference between waiting and dreaming. Dreams can come true.
If you would like to accompany the restoration: the friends’ association is being founded. Schloss Gültz, Parkstraße 12, 17089 Gültz. Contact and directions.