We have been keeping a close eye on our biggest expense (Electricity for heating), and we wanted to tell everyone how we are doing… here’s an analysis we compiled for the Committee:

Heating the Hall:

An update on 11^th February 2024

Forecast

In November we we did some analysis of the electricity costs since the 6^th November (Called “Heating the Hall“) , Our analysis & the resulting forecast said the following:

Loo Heaters: “They appear to cost around £15/week if they ran non-stop, but our best guess from the numbers is that they actually have been on about 30% (about £5/week). This cost will go up and down depending on the weather”.

Storage Heaters: “We have run them at low (2 on the input control) at this level they “keep the chill off” and seem to sustain the building at about 9-degrees. Set this way they seem to use about £15/week.” to that figure we need to add the costs of turning them up for an evening event, and my estimates were: “A similar evening event using fan heaters and turning the storage heaters up for one night would cost about £28.“

The Actual Outcome

So based on that estimate for the 69 days between 28th November and 5th February we would have forecast costs as follows:

• 11 events @ £28:00/night = £308

• Loo heaters 9.8 weeks @ £5:00/week =£49.28

• Storage heaters 9.8 weeks @ £15/week =£147.86

• total forecast cost = £505:14

The actual cost came out as £469:49 (plus £98 standing charges (pro-rata)).

Income since 29^th November

So, the net outcome is that we have an income of £381.31and heating bills of £505.14 – so while that seems quite bad, the warmer weather is coming….

…. But if we had had the gas heater running we would have forecast the costs to have been £257 as opposed to £505 (so pretty much halving our running costs), and we would have covered our electricity bill from the events we held and your generosity.

Do you know a gas engineer who can come and recommission the gas heater that was disconnected??