Testimonials

Past groups tell us the programme is fun and rewarding. Some of them have discovered they can save 1/4-1/3 of their current fuel use through better heating controls and others are applying for retrofit grants based on the evidence they collected during the programme.

St Columba’s in Ayr published a June 2024 letter in the Church of Scotland magazine Life and Work showing around a 25% decrease in fossil fuel use from installing new heating controls. In our experience, for churches this is fairly common but it’s hard to get the data.

We also asked a third party to evaluate our first version of HeatHack by interviewing participants – this is what she found.

Comments from group leaders

“The cards were fun to use and produced a lively discussion with everyone participating.”

“…the group leader training … is very helpful so far…”

“… a very interesting and useful process and we have already actively started implementing many of the new ideas and areas for attention that have come up as a result”

“… the data plots are wonderful…”

“We’re having a great time doing the HeatHack programme, some very interesting results so far!”

“Everyone in the group agreed that they had great time carrying out this  very worthwhile project, especially the card game.”

“The data plots are so enlightening. They gave us an understanding of the temperature footprint of the church 24×7, really eye opening.”

Comments from engineers

“I am enjoying the programme very much and am learning a great deal from everyone concerned. “

“I thought the cards and the prioritisation exercise were really excellent – they covered a lot more areas for consideration than we were aware of. They were also fun to use and we achieved a lot in the short space of time allocated to the game.” 

“The [card game] explanations were really good – I referred to them several times. I thought they were concise and with just the right level of detail to inform (or tantalise us to delve deeper) for the time we had available for the game.”

“We found we were heating two halls whenever one was used just because the controls were poor.”

Before this programme

 “[what we learned from monitoring] enabled us to amend our heating profiles such that the heating came on slightly earlier and more importantly switched off earlier… comfort levels for the occupants was greatly improved [at similar cost] through a more efficient use of the boilers.”  

Queensferry Parish Church

“Over the course of the past ten years, Christ Church Morningside has been most fortunate to have been able to benefit from the extensive knowledge and experience of Jean Carletta in all matters relating to the heating of our Church and its associated properties. Jean has a profound interest in all such matters, as a result of which she has been invaluable in providing wise, measured and balanced advice to the Church upon countless occasions, resulting in it being able to significantly upgrade its systems over time, improve their efficiency and, thereby, reduce its carbon footprint. She has been particularly effective in helping guide the recent replacement of the Church’s boilers, which also involved an extensive re-design of the associated pipework and other infrastructure, working closely with the appointed consulting engineer whom she also helped identify at the outset. Other examples over time have included helping reduce energy usage by some 30% by changing how boilers were used to heat our worship space and making minor changes to controls and other equipment so that building users could only influence the heating for short periods of time. Jean brings her good character and friendly and respectful personality to bear upon every discussion. As such, we would have no hesitation whatsoever in unreservedly recommending her to others seeking similar advice, help and support.”

– Michael Herriott, Factor, Christ Church Morningside (June 2022)

“During my time collaborating with HeatHack I surveyed a number of historical building, primarily churches and halls, to gain an understanding of any existing or past issues the clients had with their heating systems. This was a great experience as I was getting real life examples of how things worked (or where they didn’t).

It was interesting piecing things together to see the theory, that I was aware of, and how it actually played in practice – things don’t always line up!

Talking with clients was a valuable lesson, as it taught me that I need to listen carefully to others and understand the message they wanted to pass through. I could then use that to ask the right questions and get the information that I needed to for each one to gain a full picture of the case-study.”

Alexis Hadjivassiliou – volunteer engineer

“Churches can be unwelcoming, especially if they are only heated a few times a week.  It was really interesting to think about how their sheer mass works against the way they are typically used, and to reason through whether a specific community was getting the benefit of the energy they put into their building and whether some simple changes would make the heating more efficient.  These beautiful places could be used more if they were better understood.  Contributing in my small way to making that happen was a great experience that I can recommend.”

Clara Castañeda – volunteer engineer