Only a few years ago finding tradesmen in the building industry who understood some of the renewable technologies was almost impossible. This is changing and the Wolseley Sustainable Building Centre is one of the driving forces.
The Centre is run by one of the large building material suppliers. They built the £3M centre to demonstrate to the building industry what is available and how it can be fitted. It is a building packed with both passive and active ways of reducing energy in all types of buildings and also demonstrating that materials used in buildings can be chosen to reduce their impact on the environment.
I was lucky enough to be invited to visit the centre with a party from Optima Community Association who are themselves building and planning eco homes. I was glad to hear the centre was not only emphasising climate change as an issue but also the alarming speed that peak oil and peak gas may overtake us.
There were many interesting things that came from the visit but one that struck me was that since the feed in tariffs were introduced in April PV panels have been flying off the shelves. Likewise solar hot water panels are also very popular.
Wolseley are to be congratulated for taking the lead within the building industry and I thank them for the visit and Optima for inviting us to accompany them.
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