Heating

2-stage plan to heat the church and save the planet.

St Mary’s desperately needs heating - not just for concerts and services where we all shiver and freeze, but also to stop the whole place going mouldy.

Over the centuries damp has damaged great chunks of the building, rotted wood and destabilised stonework and made any attempt at decent decoration a lost cause. Heating St Mary’s needs the sort of money you only hear about from lottery winners! But we’ve come up with a cunning/daring/imaginative plan which could solve our problem and put us in the forefront of the whole green enterprise.

Stage 1, to raise money, establish our green credentials and put ourselves on the map as far as environmental matters are concerned: We plan to cover the south facing roof (which is invisible from all points except one nearby bathroom) with photovoltaic cells which turn light into electricity. We would sell the electricity to the National Grid. This could well raise several thousand pounds a year and much of the capital cost should be available in the form of grants.

Stage 2, the heating itself. Install a biomass heating system. I confess when I heard about this I thought we would be fermenting slurry from local pig farms. Not so. It’s a matter of burning pellets made from sawdust - much the same as you might use in your cat’s dirty tray. These are not cheap, but they are cheaper than electricity or oil and there are ways of minimising the cost.

Fans in the roof. There’s no point in spending money on heat for the church if it all goes up into the roof and keeps the pigeons toasted but the inhabitable bit of the building is still as cold as ice. The answer is fans. You put fans in the roof that gently but constantly push the hot air back to where it belongs. These are not like the ones seen in bars on the movies - much more discreet, but they do the same job - except that it’s making the place hotter rather than cooler.

PROBLEMS There are lots of complications (of course), especially with the second bit. A biomass heating system needs a lot of storage space for fuel and the “boiler” isn’t something you’d want in your kitchen cupboard. We have very good relations with the tenant of the field behind the church (which historically belongs to the church but we don’t have any direct control over it).

It’s possible that we might be able to come to an arrangement where the boiler is in that field and the heat is piped across the dyke and into the church. It costs a lot. Once again, telephone numbers!

But because we are trying to save the planet as well as heat the church there is a lot of grant aid around if only we can tap into it.

That’s easier said than done. Hours and hours of paper-work, interminable telephone conversations - though they wouldn’t be interminable if you could get hold of the person you want instead of listening to hours of “Greensleeves”.

Not everyone is convinced. Church authorities are being very encouraging at present - but there are a lot of hoops to jump through. We’re not sure what ELDC will say and there could be complicated discussions with various heritage groups. But we’re quite good at arguing and very good at being complicated so we’re not daunted by that part of the process. So as to keep everyone up to date, the parish Council is aware of our plans What we want you to do: Be excited: We’re doing ground breaking stuff here. Support us: Yes, we’d like your money, but talk us up, tell people how imaginative we are and get people on our side.