What does it cost?#
Our materials are all freely accessible online with no paywall or advertising. We intend this to continue. You can use them to run a self-guided version of the programme without paying us anything. You don’t even have to say so, although we’d be grateful if you told us how it was for you. That helps us improve our materials and get funding. It also means we might be able to tell you useful things that aren’t in the materials, since we can’t cover everything.
Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash
Usually groups want some kind of support. We are working towards a sustainable business model and expect this to combine grant income, partnerships with organisations that wish to offer the programme to a large number groups with venues, donations, charging individual non-profits at cost, and providing some paid services for the public and private sectors.
Free support for those signing up by September 2024
Although we do not currently have a grant to provide support, thanks to past trading income, donations, and our dedicated volunteers, at the moment we are still able to offer support to non-profit community groups who either own are allowed to make changes to their buildings. If you apply by September 2024 and can show us that you have a group, permission from your board, and session dates chosen, then we will send you a thermal monitor and card pack and answer any questions you have while running the programme.
To get the best experience you are likely to want some kind of thermal monitor, physical cards, and minor stationery items. Here are our estimates what this costs if you “do it yourself” and what it costs us to provide this support.
Self-guided “Do it Yourself” programme
Supported programme
Thermal monitor
These are very important for discovering whether you can save energy by inexpensive changes to the current heating system and how you operate it, often leading to very quick financial savings. Commercial data loggers cost around £45 for one that saves temperature readings to a USB stick, or £70 if you have any concerns about damp or dryness so need to include relative humidity. It costs around £140 for one that sends data to the internet, which is much more convenient if your wifi signal is good.
Electronics volunteers currently build thermal monitors from parts to our own design. They are fiddlier to use and not as reliable as commercial monitors but much cheaper - the parts cost us around £5, and postage for the monitor and cards together is £3. The monitors can either send readings to the internet using your wifi or save the data for you to pick up with a smartphone every three weeks or so. Most groups without internet prefer a commercial monitor because they are much easier to use and they will be having to fiddle with it more than once. Three alkaline batteries to run it will cost you around £3, and you will need new ones around once a year. For groups with internet, we also have running costs of £6-10 a year for the service that processes the data. We can’t charge for these monitors but some groups who can afford to give us a voluntary donation with these costs in mind.
Physical card game
People engage much better with the action card game if they have physical cards. You can print your own on normal paper for around £3.50, but they won’t hold up well to handling.
It costs us around £15.00 per double-sided pack for us to print a bunch and have a volunteer post you one.
Training
None provided; the group has access to the materials. When groups identify issues with them, we fix them as quickly as we can.
This is hard to quantify as there are too many options. We are currently working this out by thinking of it in terms of an hourly rate and any travel costs.
Incidentals
Groups vary in how much printing they do, but it’s very useful to be able to print a few copies of the site survey form, and if you don’t have a projector you will need some other pieces to hand during sessions. Sticky notes and a flip chart are also very useful, and many groups like to have coffee and snacks available. This might cost the group something like £15 if they aren’t too fancy. We never cover this.
Energy
If groups are heating an older building from a cold start just to run the sessions, this could be a big hidden cost that swamps all the others. Groups will probably have a better idea of what this cost is after the sessions than they do before them! Again, we never cover this.
We can also provide services to organisations and partners as required, based on a sliding scale of hourly rates plus any travel costs. So far we have had enquiries about facilitating group sessions including ones tailored to specific needs, providing engineering input, and helping partners adopt the programme or re-use the materials in a new way. Please tell us what you’d like and we will do our best to provide it and if you need it, help you apply for grant funding to support the work. We know some councils and commercial building operators are interested in our programme and we have trialled some ways of working with them that we are happy to discuss as well.