Brrrr – cold isn’t it!
We seem to have been quite quiet over the last few weeks, but we haven’t been idle. Aside, from fitting new door locks, distributing the keys, un-jambing the brown door, stopping the loos from freezing cleaning the kitchen, analysing the insurance, grants and paperwork – Very near the top of our agenda has been the subject of heating the hall.
In this post I wanted to describe the outcome of the research we have been doing and outline our intended plan.
This is quite a complicated subject – so you can read this post to find out what is happening, or just take it that the Trustees and Committee have a plan that should get us through the winter and put us in a better state for the future.
What We have
As you might be aware there are two sets of heating in the hall, some storage heaters and a large fixed gas heater.
The Storage Heaters
The storage heaters are designed to run overnight on “Economy 7” electricity (although it’s not called that these days!). They operate by using “low cost” electricity to store heat overnight and then release it through the whole day to warm the building. The amount of electricity (energy) they collect overnight is controlled by the “input control” on the heater – this is not like a normal thermostat, and they can only release during the day the heat they gathered overnight. We tried setting this input control to different values to see how it heated the hall and what it cost… the answers were alarming.
On “full” (5) they do heat the room to maybe or 13/14 degrees but use £100 of electricity a WEEK!!!
Turned down to “2” they do reduce the chill in the building, stopping the damp and freezing, but the rooms are too cold to meet in, about 9-degrees and by the end of the day most of the overnight stored heat is gone (ask the Crafters!) Set at this rate they cost around £15/week to run.
If one of the “team” comes in the night before, they can be turned up for a known event, but have to be turned down afterwards.
The other control on these heaters is a “boost” control. This is just an in-built convector heater, but sadly it will use the “expensive” (full rate) power, so it will be slow and very expensive to raise the temperature of the room for an event.
The Gas Heater
This is designed to rapidly heat the room (just what is needed for an event) but sadly, Calor have been telling KVH for some years that the gas tank was too old and needed replacing. This didn’t happen, and at some point the heater was disconnected so is not in a working state.
We have done some computation and it seems this would cost around these will cost about £1:80 an hour (much more affordable), so about £5:50 for an evening or £7:50 for an afternoon session.
What’s Missing
There is nothing to heat the toilets or the Kitchen!
So, in the past Sam, has been forced to turn off the water supply and regularly drain the water from the toilets to stop them freezing.
Not a very good “community hub” if it doesn’t have loos or a way to make Coffee!!!
This has to be fixed, so we have temporarily placed some (donated from a Trustee’s boat!) tubular heaters (like greenhouse ones), with frost-stats in the toilets, to prevent the freezing, (but they are still pretty cold!!).
Sadly, it is illegal (and not safe) to have these plugged in when people are using the hall. Instead they have to be hardwired in, so we have engaged a local “spark”, with history in the Parish, to come an install some new ones we have purchased in the next few weeks. We will also install one under the sink in the Kitchen to save the pipes there.
One of the team has some experience with hot things!
What Next
Item 1 is to fit the tubular heaters to save us from burst pipes.
Item 2 is to fix the gas heater, this has several steps…
- Pay Calor £200+ VAT to remove the old tank.
- Get someone to inspect the gas heater to make sure it can be used.
- Pay Calor to install a changeover valve so we can use 47KG “tall bottles” – (one should last almost a year). Sadly they can’t do this until February.
- Connect up the gas fire – and at least we will be affordably warm when we are meeting…
At that point we need to think about a longer term plan.
The obvious answer seems to be solar heating (solar panels and storage heaters working together) but we are also speaking to suppliers to look at other options (Infrared etc.) and looking at improved loft insulation (does anybody know where we can get some fleeces, as that seems to be another approach! )
We are also looking into how/if we can access some grants to help cover the heating costs and allow us to offer a “warm space” for the community.
So, while it might take a month or so to fix the situation properly, and we will have to do with fan heaters in the interim (at about £2:50 per hour each) – we DO have a plan and it is being worked on.
A vote of thanks to the Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer for ploughing through all the information, paperwork and administration. As none of the previous committee decided to continue, one of our first jobs is to prepare a “handover report” so we understand where we are, and any outstanding commitments – we will publish this here in the coming weeks, so that you all know how your Hall is situated, from funding to fire inspections.
If you want to know more, please talk to any of the Committee, Friends or Trustees. If you want more detail you can read the report we made to help us in decision making by clicking the link below, or even read the spreadsheet with all the meeting reading and computations….
The “Report”
The “SpreadSheet”
Hope that helped – Just remember to bring your big coat!
As you may be aware, we have been trying to get someone to take on the job of being a “bookings manager” for the Hall. This is the person who people can contact to book an event at the hall, will manage the calendar and provide information on booking terms, prices etc, (and orchestrate the helpers too).
Kaber Village Hall 