Community Building Energy Audits
By Experience Huntly on 18/01/2023
Aberdeenshire Council, on behalf of the North and South Aberdeenshire Local Action Groups, have contracted mwclubb Architectural Design to provide Energy Audits and Retrofit Plans for 25 community owned or operated buildings across Aberdeenshire. These bespoke retrofit plans will help with the transition of community buildings to energy efficient and zero-carbon heating systems.
About the project
The first part of this project is to select 25 buildings from across the county that represent a fair distribution of different buildings, based on age, design, heating system, use pattern and location.
We plan to select at least four community owned or operated buildings from each of the six council areas: Banff & Buchan, Buchan, Formartine, Garioch, Kincardine & Mearns and Marr. Unfortunately buildings in the Cairngorm National Park cannot be included in this project.
Each selected building will undergo a detailed survey by our team of architects and retrofit experts. We will build detailed energy models of each building that reflect their current and future usage pattern and evaluate all the options for improving these buildings to make them comfortable and ready for zero-emissions heating systems, like heat pumps.
Retrofit Plans
Staged Retrofit Plans will be produced for each building, which will give the building operators an understanding of the most suitable measures, their estimated cost and order of installation. This will allow the building operators to plan the improvements over a number of years and to source appropriate funding. The reports will be suitable for supporting applications to the CARES Fund from the Scottish Government.
Timeline
The timeline for this work is very short, we need to select the buildings by the 20th January and complete the Retrofit Plans by 15th March 2023. The project is funded by the Scottish Government’s Rural Community Led Vision Fund, administered by Aberdeenshire Council on behalf of the North and South Aberdeenshire Local Action Groups, so there are no costs to the community.
We will be holding community engagement events to explain more about the retrofit survey, retrofit plans and some of the possible solutions that might be proposed. Please keep an eye on our website for further details.
Community Building Questionnaire
There's no definitive list of community owned and operated buildings for Aberdeenshire. We don't want to miss any, so if you have a community building that would benefit from a retrofit plan, please complete a questionnaire to help us. For each building we need to know its usage pattern, so if you're a building owner or operator and you can help with this information please provide it on the questionnaire. You can complete the questionnaire here. Or alternatively please email the information and your contact details to community@mwclubb.co.uk
Thank you
Matthew Clubb
mwclubb | Architectural Design