Saturday, 21 February 2015

Solar Cities Scotland event for Pentland and Logie residents

From Solar Cities Scotland about improving your home insulation :

We are having a drop in event from 10am-6pm on Monday 23rd February in Room 17 at the Mitchell Street Centre.

We have invited all Pentland residents in order to view their recent thermal images as well as Logie residents to in order to discuss the progress of our internal insulation pilot project in one home in Logie for which we received an award of £2000 from Dundee Partnership.  Full information on the outcomes will be in the final report which will be produced by the end of March 2015.

If you happen to be free and in the area please feel free to drop in or to pass this on to anyone who you think may be interested in finding out more about thermal imaging or our Logie pilot project.    We are happy to give advice with any energy efficiency related queries or renewable technologies for anyone as always too. 

Please note that, as there is no lift to this room, we have offered to visit people in their homes, or email images to people who have accessibility issues or who can't make it along on Monday.

Background to the Logie insulation project

Solar Cities Scotland applied to the Dundee Partnership in September 2014 and was successfully awarded £2000 for a Pilot Insulation Project in Logie.

We are grateful to the Dundee Partnership for this funding to allow this pilot project to go ahead. We will pass on our findings to Dundee City Council Housing Department as well as to Logie residents, local councillors and other interested parties. We hope that by using this internal insulation product we may be able to offer a viable solution to assist with lowering energy costs and carbon emissions the residents of these solid wall properties in Logie.

The Logie properties are nearly 100 years old and are known as ‘hard to heat’ properties due to the fact that they are solid wall properties which are not suitable for cavity wall insulation. As a Conservation Area, no external insulation can be applied to the homes. The houses have large, draughty basements which cannot be insulated due to the presence of asbestos. As a result, the only hard measure that can be done is loft insulation. Our thermal images identified that the majority of these homes already have this to the current standard. The issue remains that the homes are expensive to heat with many of the residents suffering from fuel poverty. There are many older people within these homes.

We are supporting the Dundee Partnership's commitment to tackling deprivation by 'closing the gap' between inequalities in terms of housing and fuel poverty across Dundee.

We hope that this project will enable people (predominantly older people) to stay in their homes longer, and in higher comfort levels, by highlighting a route to tackling hard to treat homes in the West End of Dundee.