by Kellie Channing and Pete Carty, the National Trust’s “Green Champions” in South Shropshire.
NEXT week (March 21-27) coincides with National Climate Week. We’re sure you will all know the National Trust mainly for the many beautiful buildings and areas of countryside we preserve.
Whilst doing this the Trust also tries its best to promote “green” initiatives and, to quote the organisers of Climate Week, “. . . to do their bit to protect our planet and create a secure future”.
In line with the initiatives of the week we will be running some events at Carding Mill Valley, Church Stretton, to show you what we do, but more about that later.
National Trust in South Shropshire has been active in adopting “green” initiatives for about eight years.
We have carried out exercises to look at our carbon footprint, and how much electricity, oil and water we are using.
Some of our historic buildings, with large spaces to heat, draughty roofs and single glazing, present great challenges when it comes to keeping them at constant temperatures to protect our valuable works of art and historic artefacts.
We started small, replacing our light bulbs with low energy ones, (nationally the Trust developed a new light bulb with the manufacturer Phillips, which didn’t damage the important fabrics in our historic houses).
The electricity meters are read monthly, which helps us to identify departments which are high users of energy and look at the possible ways of reducing this; plus we can pick up quickly on faulty equipment that is using increased energy. We try hard to switch things off and have ‘triple A’ rated kettles and fridges.
Our biggest gains, however, have been achieved by converting from oil fuel to wood fuel something we have in plenty, and often in woodlands that are crying out for some management work.
At Wenlock Edge in particular wood fuel helps pay for much needed woodland management which in turn helps maintain the rich ground flora and important dormouse population.
Dudmaston has installed woodchip boilers at both the Estate Office and the Mose Complex. This was followed a few years later by the installation of a log boiler and solar water heating at the Chalet Pavilion Tea room in Carding Mill Valley. This boiler, which is 92 per cent efficient, is a type commonly used in central Europe, but until recently was scarce in UK. It replaces £6,000 worth of fuel oil with 50 tons of logs.
Hopefully this will be reduced even further following insulation works later in the year. One of our current new initiatives is the possibility of utilising hydro power by using the Edwardian pipe work in Carding Mill Valley to generate electricity. The pipes are in a bad state but investigations are still ongoing.
At present Dudmaston Hall is heated using gas oil which, as many of you know, has increased hugely in price over the last year, and as you can imagine the bills can be enormous, (certainly more than your average household).
In a bid to decrease both our expenditure on oil and our carbon footprint we are looking into installing either a wood chip or log boiler to heat the hall and the advantages and disadvantages of both systems.
This includes the storage of fuel and the frequency and system of the boiler, plus the amount of timber needed annually. We do, after all, still want to maintain a healthy woodland and don’t want to go into the business of deforestation.
Some of the other climate saving measures we are introducing at the property are: improved recycling facilities, composting garden refuse, and rain water harvesting; plus the gardeners have worked very hard over the winter to create a kitchen garden which will supply fruit and vegetables to the tea room.
The advantages of having freshly picked produce with no carbon footprint are immeasurable.
Lastly we are looking at the lighting used to light the exterior of the hall to see if we can reduce the quantity of lights and the types of lights used and we hope, in the future, to install lights in the lavatories which will activated by movement and then turn off automatically after a period of time.
By continually chipping away at our energy usage we will save both money and the climate so we cannot think of any disadvantages to the ideals and targets we have set ourselves.
If you are interested in finding out more about our work and want to see our technologies in action then come along to our open day at Long Mynd House and Chalet Pavilion on March 25 from 11 am to see log fuel and solar technology at work including the launch of our brand new wood fuel cooker and boiler located in our area ranger’s house.
Our staff will be on hand to answer all your questions – well, we’ll try our best.