The energy saving refurbishment of the Village Hall has now been successfuly completed!

The hall is very much the centre of the village, and used regularly by about 20 community groups. It seemed sensible that any work on the hall should take energy saving into account. Now everyone will benefit from the "green thinking."

The building work involved

• creating a new boilerhouse and fuel store, to replace the inefficient old boiler. This part was done by a Lowestoft project, The Yard, employing young teenagers
• Installing a biomass boiler which is fuelled by wood pellets made by a Lowestoft firm, from window and door frame off-cuts
• insulating the hall including cavity wall and loft insulation
• placing photovoltaic panels on the rool to provide electricity (the largest single area of PV cells in Suffolk, capable of generating 9.3 kilowatts of electricity

  It is estimated that this energy saving work will give at least £1000 a year reduction in fuel bills in the future and reduce the carbon footprint by 20 tons. We hope to be able to sell some of the electricity to the national grid.

The project was funded from various sources. An application for funds to help with this project was submitted to EEDA (East of England Development Agency) by WESG. Twenty-nine applications for funding were made and Wenhaston was one of the four successful applicants. £70,000 was approved for the project. Other energy saving funders who contributed to the project were BRE Big Lottery - £46,725; Low Carbon Build Programme Phase 2 - £27,463 and Suffolk County Council (CRF) - £19,848.