UKC

Just been to my local leisure centre, and it is so hot in the public areas and changing rooms, I nearly passed out, and the radiators are too hot to touch, in the Exercise areas though, the air con, is rumbling away.

I mentioned to a young man who works there that possibly, this is a bad thing, on both environmental levels and financial, and it would be sad if in a couple of months, the centre had to shut down due to energy bills.

Now I do not know, they may have a fixed contract or whatever, but what piqued my interest was the young mans comment. "The council would never allow the Leisure centre to shut". That strikes me as being dangerously naive. Particularly as 700 mrs away there is the local swimming pool, the council shut 10 years ago. 

Do I really have to send a moaning email to the Council, will it make any difference, TBH, I doubt I will, just move on.

<MOAN over, thanks for listening>

In reply to Godwin:

The question is why on earth would you want the heating on in a gym? 

In reply to gethin_allen:

My experience of public buildings is that they will turn the heating off when it gets cold and turn it back on in May. 

In reply to gethin_allen:

In the reception area, where most staff cluster, mostly observing their mobile phones, it is nice and toasty. I suspect this is why.

In reply to Godwin:

I work in the public sector, mostly from home, but last time I was in the office it was so hot from the heating that people had the windows open.

Of course we've had plenty of emails and online training about how we can save energy by not sending 'thank you' emails and turning screens off lol. Which obviously use orders of magnitude less energy than heating up a huge building to t-shirt temperatures. 

I imagine the root of the problem is that the heating system is very old and rudimentary, and it's difficult to get a setting that keeps cold rooms warm enough and warm rooms cool enough, and doubt it automatically turns down after reaching temperature in the mornings. Long term lack of investment means we have a very old and inefficient heating system.

I think expectations around indoor temperature in winter must come into play too - some people seem to expect indoor spaces to be 21+ degrees all winter, but really if they just put it down a bit to say 17 it would save a huge amount of energy and people would still be fine if they just kept one warm layer on, maybe 2 layers for older people that feel the cold. 

​​​​​Is funny that the guy in the leisure centre thought they would never be shut down though lol... Short memories. Also a terrible excuse for wasting council money when they should know how limited it is.

And agree about it being totally pointless heating a gym anywhere near that hot! 

In reply to AukWalk:

I suspect many peoples expectations are going to change, possibly people will actually come to find places at 21+, uncomfortable.

I am just amazed at his naivety. A couple of months ago there was a council van parked for an hour outside my warehouse with the engine running, with windows open, whilst the lads had lunch. I was a touch annoyed, but if people are not personally paying, generally they do not care. There is a climbing hut I go to, and it looks like the queen Mary all lit up, lights on in every room, with maybe 6 members, bet they turn lights off at home.

It was double whammy having the air con on, I am not sure which is most expensive, CH or AC, but having the two fighting it out seems daft. I wonder if the thermostat is in the Air Conditioned area, I will have a snoot on Wednesday.

In reply to Godwin: Energy waste in many public buildings is shocking. This is often because the control systems (building energy management systems) are in a total mess and lack of know how to set them up correctly or diagnose and rectify faults 

In reply to kevin stephens:

Make that pretty much any office, public or private.