Wiser Customer Stories: Supporting A Local Community Hub To Save Energy And Money

Case Study: Buckland Chapel

Nestled in the close village community of Buckland Monachorum in Devon, the Buckland Chapel Trust manages this stone chapel which is utilised as a community hub, hosting community events, groups, and a local food hub that benefits the more vulnerable in the community, who struggle to buy their basic supplies.

What problems did Buckland Chapel Trust face with conventional heating?

Before installing smart heating by Wiser in 2020, the Trust faced many challenges getting temperatures in the hall and meeting rooms to desired levels on time, often travelling to the site hours before hirers were due to arrive to turn on the heating and hope it reached comfortable levels on time, an enormous drain on time, resource and risking either wasted energy or inadequate heating.

How did smart heating by Wiser help the Trust?

The Trust decided to purchase a Wiser 3-channel thermostat kit, providing control of their two heating circuits, one that covered the hall, foyer and bathrooms, and the other controlling the meeting rooms. They also later purchased a smart plug to resolve some difficulties with signal strength caused by the thick stone walls of the main hall, due to the smart plug's additional functionality as a signal booster for all Wiser devices.

With Wiser and remote heating control via the Wiser Home app, trustees adjust heating schedules according to their bookings week-to-week, from the comfort of their own home, providing more convenient control, improved efficiency and more of the Trust’s time and money saved to focus on their community work.

The convenience of smart eating by Wiser has already provided numerous benefits for the Trust’s building custodians:

• Convenient control of the chapel's heating without the need to travel to the site.
• No need for the building hirers to turn on or adjust heating during their session.
• Energy and money saved by only activating heating when and where it's needed.
• Better comfort for users, some of whom are elderly.
• Wiser’s device lock feature ensures settings cannot be tampered with by other users.
• With device lock disabled, manual control features allow other users to boost or reduce heating via the device if needed.

Wiser – the buildable smart heating system

We recently reached out to the Trust to see how they were getting on with their Wiser heating controls, and if we could offer any support. We were delighted to donate a number of Smart Radiator Thermostats and a Wiser Plug to the Trust to enable reliable multi-room control in meeting rooms adjacent to the main hall. With typically only one room booked at a time, the multi-room control provided by the smart TRVs means only heating the room that's needed, when it's needed, without needing to be onsite, saving valuable time, energy and money. Watch the video for more.

If you'd like to support Buckland Chapel Trust in their community work, we encourage you to visit the website and make a donation.

Why will community hubs become more important?

For many, recent news of energy price rises has hit like a ton of bricks, particularly for low-income families as well as custodians of older, poorly insulated buildings such as Buckland Chapel, who rely on donations to maintain buildings and continue to run vital services such as the food hub.

It's likely that this winter, more UK residents will become victims of fuel poverty, increasing reliance on local initiatives such as this. We want to help more households reduce wasted energy and keep on top of their energy bills, find out how Wiser can save you up to £450 a year in energy 

How can smart heating benefit building custodians?

As the Buckland Chapel Trust have found, there are many benefits available to building custodians by embracing smart heating technology:

• Schedule heating, check temperatures and make adjustments without the need to be onsite.
• Hirers don’t need to be taught how to turn on or adjust the heating.
• With multi-room control, only heat the zones you need to, when you need to.
• Enable device lock via the Wiser Home app to prevent users tampering with heating and preserve your desired settings.
• Get detailed feedback on the building’s heating use via the Wiser Home app’s Insights and Heat Report features.
• Have a smart meter? Purchase Insights+ for a one-off charge of just £14.99 to receive more advanced usage data, spend tracking, spend predictions, set monthly usage budgets, and get notifications when approaching budgets, to help you manage costs and adjust hire prices if needed.
• Smart heating ensures comfort for building users and maximum efficiency for bill payers.
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