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 - Article 025
Narborough: Portacabin Heating & Lighting Project
In 2005 we completed our project to bring heating and lighting to our onsite portacabin which we use as both a meeting place with a kitchenette and toilet and where we undertake training courses.
The high cost of bringing mains electricity to our site, which is remote from housing and sits between the MI Motorway; Rail tracks main Central Train line from Leicester to Market Harborough and Peterborough; the Narborough Bog (a triple SSI) local nature reserve and the Narborough Parish Councils Playing Fields.
There it sits nestling in the centre of all this public land is the Narborough Allotments Site with its 53 plots. (All full let and with 10 on the Waiting List.) Not withstanding this, we set about raising the money mainly from grants to generate our own electricity and to heat and light the portacabin using "green" Agenda 21 methods.
For Heating the portacabin we chose a Bio-thermal Extra Flame baby Fiamma pellet stove complete with hearth and external flue system together with a Solar water heater for the hand basin in the toilet and kitchenette. For the Lighting we use an externally housed Bio-diesel electricity generator.
Funding has mainly come through grants. The generator and housing together with the diesel storage tank came from the Shell Better Britain Award; RSNC (Seed Scheme) and the Solar water heating; Bio Thermal Pellet Stove came support from the Governments "Clear Skies" Grant; Blaby District Councils Community Grant; The Ken Chamberlain Trust and the National Lottery - Awards for All Grant.
Work of building the generator housing was undertaken by one of the allotment members, who was at the time the Site Manager and he worked entirely on his own. Being an Engineer he undertook the work to his own design specifications.
The cost in providing electricity on site, together with a heated meeting place, when the bills are added up will have cost the association just over £10,770.
The site members have provided the drive and enthusiasm to see the job through and an active management committee who have given encouragement to see the job completed at little cost to the association.
If one small site in Leicestershire can do it then there is no real reason why others cannot do it also.
[Trevor Matthews]
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