Heathack at Bellfield

Action Porty have signed up to do a Heathack on Bellfield. This programme will help us to understand what a net zero future holds for Bellfield. It will help us understand energy efficiency and thermal comfort in our wonderful but fairly tricky building. It will help us think about what our local community needs from Bellfield, whether that means changes, and how to make change happen. We want to devise a plan for the future, to help us instruct heating engineers and architects with briefs that will get us where we want to be as we take Bellfield to the next stage in its development.

The project needs an engineer, and James Lewis has agreed to take that role and it needs a Group Leader, a function which Jennifer Elliot will undertake. James has had a humidity monitor, provided by Heathack installed in Bellfield for a few months now so there is data to analyse. The core team includes our Office Manager, Gail Stark who knows the building and users well, Alastair Cameron a key volunteer who has programmed the heating every week it is needed for many years, Al Reid, Trustee who drove the Solar Panel project and who is fondly known at ‘The Jannie’ and Ian Cooke, Secretary of Action Porty, our ‘Rock’, who leads the development plans and works diligently in the Fundraising team. The wider team will involve our users, our community and anyone with an interest in knowing more or helping out.

The project kicks off with a meeting to get to know the building and get some baselines of information, bringing the team together. This will take place in Dec 2022. The next meeting will be in Jan 2023 and focuses in more closely on what is important to tackle or do at Bellfield and on taking next steps. The third session uses data to drive change, it gets specific on what is working, what is not, what needs to change. It will likely be in Feb 2023 and lastly around March 2023 we’ll plan a community event to present the findings and actions. This event has to take place before June 2023 with the project all wrapped up by July 2023.

Personally, I hope to widen the knowledge of how heating works at Bellfield, maybe building a team to assist Alastair in his weekly programming, to reduce our energy bills by getting more energy efficient but delivering what we need heat wise, to be part of delivering net zero in Scotland and to see the next phase of Bellfield’s development happen in an informed way.

If you are interested in getting involved or have any points you want to share, please get in touch with Jennifer Elliot on jennifer@actionporty.com