St Vincent’s Chapel have recently used the HeatHack workshops to develop a plan for their net zero journey. St Vincent’s is a beautiful church situated in the heart of Stockbridge, which serves its congregation and is used widely for community events.
Jane Gauld took on leading the HeatHack sessions and found it helpful to have the agenda for each meeting set out in timed sections with guidelines. She commented “Our volunteer engineer was always on hand to help answer questions. We were lucky to get the monitoring set up early on and then we quickly established our group and sorted out when to hold the meetings.” The group greatly appreciated being able to monitor the temperature in different zones of their building, and to use this information in their discussions. They found the card game a useful way to consider all possibilities towards net zero, without feeling pressurised to decide on one outcome or another.
During the sessions, Barnaby Miln, St Vincent’s Property Convener, shared his experience of controlling the church’s heating by Hive from his iPhone and iPad, a recent innovation. Barnaby deals with the letting of the church building to outside individuals and organisations, which enables the building to be used nearly every day. During the past year, 169 of these lettings were for events lasting more than two hours, which has implications on maintaining a comfortable temperature in the building. Barnaby pointed out that “what feels warm enough for an hour, can start to feel chilly after two hours”.
Jane Gauld concluded that “HeatHack has given St Vincent’s Chapel the knowledge and confidence to plan and deliver for our part in the SEC Net Zero Action Plan.” It will be exciting to see these plans turning into action and we look forward to hearing more from St Vincent’s and supporting their journey to net zero.
Bethany Nelson, Empowerment Coordinator
