The Journey Begins!

You'll probably identify with the starting point of our journey: rising energy costs, a desire to continue to be hospitable, a passion to care for our beautiful planet and the daunting sense that we have a big challenge on our hands.  Where to start?

Let there be new lights! 

The Plan: Let's reduce the number of lights we use and switch to LED. 

"By replacing 20 old tubes in the Hall with 10 new LED ones we will still have enough light from fewer bulbs – a 90% reduction on energy consumption (and cost!) That’s from £1.20 per hour of lighting to 12p per hour.  Just think how many hours those lights are on over the course of a year." 

First Step: A fact-finding mission to discover what we've got & what we use & what it would cost to change

Two of our volunteer team (Mike & Rod) set out to count & measure our lights & the power usage, and to calculate the costs. If you're into facts, you'll like this list:

How many lights have we got?

• 59 fluorescent lights in the Church Centre
• 34 other internal or external lights
• 45 lights in the church
• Total number of lights audited on site: 138

How much does it cost to run the lights?

• 2.2KW (£1.20) used with all current lights in the church hall on.
• 0.2KW (12p) would be used if switched to LEDs

How much do new LED light tubes cost

• 1 light tube costs £10. And pays for itself within months.

Next Steps: 

We slowly make the switch: Over 5 or 6 sessions, the team of volunteers switch the lights in the different parts of the church and centre?

What an adventure this was! To substitute all the lights at the church we had scaffold tower assembled to be able to reach our high ceilings. Not only this was used to replace the light bulbs, we were also able to capture the most gorgeous pictures of our church as well, we will be sharing this on our website soon. 

We ask for help: As part of our wider 'Let the Light Shine' campaign, we're asking the community and church family to help fund the Great Light Switch.

£10 pays for a new tube. And we have a lot to buy!

Click here if you'd like to give something towards the project.

The savings in numbers: We already received electricity bills reflecting the light bulbs change.

With halogen bulbs our electricity bill was £750. After the big change, out electricity bill was £501! we saved around £200 with this change. Not only we are able to help out our lovely planet, we are also saving pocket money. Win-win situation.

As part of our eco-church campaign, we try to handle the waste wisely:

Giant marble run potential! It was great receive this message from Mike: 

"We have almost 30, 6-foot long cardboard tubes from changing over all the lights (about 3 or 4 cm wide); they can of course just be recycled - but I think there's an amazing kid's activity / messy church thing in there somewhere if we wanted (then recycle them afterwards). Would you like to keep them for now? (Or at least have a look and see if you want them before we bin them). I'm thinking a giant marble run, or maybe some cardboard sculpting, but you might have better ideas!"

Reach us if you are interested in building a giant run course or if you have other projects.