We’ve had a request from a busy charity that has been paired with one of our Engineers without Borders volunteers. They’d like us to suggest words they can send out to help them recruit the members for their small group. Charity volunteers tend to be passionate and dedicated, but over-stretched, and it can be tricky […]
We’ve trained our first group leaders and engineers, and they are ready to run sessions. If you’re curious to see more detail of what the sessions contain, you can find the session schedules and supporting materials here: Materials – HeatHack We’re still finishing off some elements of it, but they’ll be done in time for […]
It’s important in our group sessions that everyone participates. Games are a very common way to make activities more engaging and ensure this happens. For our second session, we’ve devised a sort of a game. There’s no winners and no losers, and no real sense of knowing how the group has done, but it has cards […]
Last night we spoke to Eco-Congregation Scotland members about our programme. Eco-Congregation has been very supportive of what we do because it complements and deepens what they are themselves able to offer. For those who were unable to make it, here are the slides we used. HeatHack presentation for Eco-Congregation Scotland, 16 August 2022
We’re having many conversations with community groups as we match them to engineers, and some of them have raised an issue to do with Covid. They know that more ventilation means more heat loss, and that draughts make people much less comfortable. They don’t want to risk anyone’s health, so they are asking what the […]
Many of our volunteer engineers have told us they want to connect with each other. Sometimes they just want to meet others with the same interests, but they also want to provide each other with peer support. A fair few have specialist knowledge or skills that will help us develop the programme further. Connection will help […]
One of our community groups has already asked us about electricity monitoring. This is something we’ve done in the past using equipment that utility companies were giving out for free about ten years ago. We don’t have many monitors – although they are still available from dusty cupboards everywhere, and sometimes, rather expensively, on ebay. […]
We’ve been thinking about what reading materials to provide to the groups and engineers involved in the programme. There are lots of resources available on-line. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but they are scattered, and many of them assume too much background knowledge in how buildings work. We’ve been writing basic material that […]
We’re currently working on writing up the materials that groups will use during their sessions. Each week, there are some concepts to think about and some kind of practical activity. Some of the activities have the groups conduct a simplified site survey that will help them understand their heating systems and understand what professionals need […]
Recruitment for our programme is going well and we’re just starting to match engineers to groups. Lots of people have asked how this is going to work, and the answer is – we haven’t done this before! Here’s how we’re going about it. For engineers who don’t already know what community group they want to […]