Back again and first time this year: Maidenhead’s successful Repair Café gives people’s broken or worn-out possessions a new lease of life! See people like yourself rebuilding, repairing and recycling things that might otherwise be thrown away. Open again in our ECO-Action Hub.
Please register here if you wish to bring something for repair to reserve your time-slot: Or feel free to email the Repair Café team on repair.maidenhead@gmail.com.
We open from 10:00 to 15:00. Repair skills available at this next event include: – small electrical items (excludes microwaves and large items) – laptops/computers, phone repairs (except screen repairs) – IT assistance(e.g. anti-virus, software updates) – glass repairs, book binding, fixing picture frames – basic woodwork, small furniture items – sewing and mending, textiles repairs
We aim to fix anything, our volunteers love to solve problems!
Join us in the ECO Action Hub from 10:00 – 12:00 on 16th December 2023
A drop in session to help you build your own nest box and take home for your garden!
No prior knowledge of building boxes or of using the right tools is required
Bisham Nest Box Group will bring all equipment and tools you need to build nest boxes.
From Bisham Nest Box Group: We are a small, not-for-profit volunteer group making nest boxes for garden birds, owls, raptors, swifts, hedgehogs, bats and bees. We just ask for a donation to cover the cost of the materials. Bisham Nest Box Group
In the ECO Action Hub from 10:00 to 12:00 Saturday 16th December. Drop in!
“Our Positive Tipping Points are bringing change to the climate crisis”.
New research at the University of Exeter highlights the growing threat of “tipping points” that could accelerate the climate crisis. They’re also identifying sources of hope: Positive Tipping Points. That sounds like good news?
We have identified Positive Tipping Points in a range of areas from agriculture and ecosystem regeneration to politics and public opinion. Some Positive Tipping Points are already in progress. Others are yet to be triggered. Understanding these areas and working to identify the opportunities could allow us to activate Tipping Points that could combine into cascades of positive change.
Interest in heat pumps is soaring because of the UK’s need to get off fossil fuels; and the government are now offering a grant of £7500 if you swap your gas boiler a heat pump.
Heat pumps don’t make heat so much as move it, like the way that the pump in your fridge moves heat out of the fridge to the kitchen, but in reverse.
The pump uses expansion and contraction of a refrigerant to create a multiplier effect. So, for every unit of energy that drives the pump, it gives back 3 or 4 times that amount in the form of heat. This is several times more efficient than a fossil fuel boiler – and far less polluting now that so much grid electricity is renewable.
Homes all vary, so the essential first step in thinking about getting a heat pump is to have a heat loss survey; this will tell you how much energy your home needs to be comfortable. It is wise to ensure that all reasonable insulating has been done – draughts, loft insulation, double-glazing etc – but heat pump homes do not need to be super-insulated.
Heat pumps send water round your radiators like a conventional boiler, but at lower temperatures (45-50 degrees compared to 65-75 degrees). This means it takes longer to heat up the whole house but the thermal comfort is steadier than with a boiler. With boilers we are used to instant heat which we then turn off at night; heat pumps work in a slow and steady way – including at night on the “setback” temperature. The radiators usually feel only slightly warm, even tepid.
There are heat pumps available now which use water at higher temperatures. This can allow a simpler swap-out-swap-in installation process (with lower associated costs), although they don’t offer the same efficiency as lower temperature pump systems.
Heat pumps vary, and can be designed for certain weather conditions. The heat pumps which are so popular in Nordic countries are specified differently from UK ones.
One point to bear in mind is that the moment your boiler breaks down is a bad time to think about getting a heat pump, especially in colder weather. It’s not a moment when people want to spend time researching new technologies and assessing heat loss – they just want to be warm, so they tend to just get a new boiler.
Last time this year: Maidenhead’s successful Repair Café gives people’s broken or worn-out possessions a new lease of life! See people like yourself rebuilding, repairing and recycling things that might otherwise be thrown away. Open again in our ECO-Action Hub.
Please register here if you wish to bring something for repair to reserve your time-slot: Or feel free to email the Repair Café team on repair.maidenhead@gmail.com.
We open from 10:00 to 15:00. Repair skills available at this next event include: – small electrical items (excludes microwaves and large items) – laptops/computers, phone repairs (except screen repairs) – IT assistance(e.g. anti-virus, software updates) – glass repairs, book binding, fixing picture frames – basic woodwork, small furniture items – sewing and mending, textiles repairs
We aim to fix anything, our volunteers love to solve problems!
This is Parisa Wright’s TEDTalk last month. She’s talking about her journey to a more sustainable lifestyle and what she is now doing to help her family & her community.
Living Sustainably: Her story and the journey she has been on is so well described and emotionally powerful. She talks about how living sustainably to benefit her community and her children is all about saving money.
Thinking about getting a heat pump? Got lots of questions? Need to talk to an expert?
Do they make economic & environmental sense?
How can you get the best deal and outcome?
What’s best and are they the right thing for you?
Hear from our experts who have the answers, practical experiences, and have ‘lived’ with them? Put your questions to our specialist panel chaired by Peter Gibbs (From BBC R4 Gardeners’ Question Time and our local ‘Weather Man’). Find out if heat-pumps will work for you.
The recent illegal tactics adopted by Just Stop Oil and other such groups have split public opinion and sent news media like the Daily Mail into a proper ragin’ fury. Continual photos of long traffic queues on the M25 were accompanied by stories of key workers such as nurses who were unable to get to hospitals, relatives who could not attend funerals etc.
There is no doubt these activities caught the public’s notice, but left many feeling alienated from the cause because of the seeming unfairness of the results.
Photo: Proper Content
Intelligently, Chris Packham does not start by taking sides in the debate. He just asks the question: in the ever-worsening environmental crisis is it time to go beyond lawful protest into civil disobedience and illegal activities?
The resulting programme is more of a think-piece than a documentary. If the legal and governmental structures we have are proving unresponsive to the climate crisis, there is a case to consider more direct action. As we know, it can work (suffragettes) but it doesn’t always (anti-abortion protests in US).
Tragically, Packham partly blames himself for the current situation: as a high profile conservationist and spokesperson on environmental issues, he has failed to bring about the changes needed.
One of the most anguished parts of the programme is Chris Packham talking about his intense disappointment when attending COP 26 in Glasgow – the only truly global mechanism for dealing with these challenges. There, despite consistent and alarming evidence about the climate emergency, decisions were ducked, agreements were botched and national financial interest constantly put ahead of global responsibility – encouraged by the highly-paid and persuasive voices in the fossil fuel lobby. So we wait and watch to see what comes out of COP 27.
We rate this programme very highly and encourage you watch it if you haven’t already (link here). Not everyone liked it, with the Daily Mail reporting “Suella Braverman slams Chris Packham”. Well, that’s that sorted out then.
Last time this year: Maidenhead’s successful Repair Café gives people’s broken or worn-out possessions a new lease of life! See people like yourself rebuilding, repairing and recycling things that might otherwise be thrown away. Open again in our ECO-Action Hub.
Please register here if you wish to bring something for repair to reserve your time-slot: Or feel free to email the Repair Café team on repair.maidenhead@gmail.com.
We open from 10:00 to 15:00. Repair skills available at this next event include: – small electrical items (excludes microwaves and large items) – laptops/computers, phone repairs (except screen repairs) – IT assistance(e.g. anti-virus, software updates) – glass repairs, book binding, fixing picture frames – basic woodwork, small furniture items – sewing and mending, textiles repairs
We aim to fix anything, our volunteers love to solve problems!
Thinking about getting a heat pump? Got lots of questions? Need to talk to an expert? We’ve just released more tickets s this event is proving very popular. What question will you ask?
Do they make economic & environmental sense?
How can you get the best deal and outcome?
What’s best and are they the right thing for you?
Hear from our experts who have the answers, practical experiences, and have ‘lived’ with them? Put your questions to our specialist panel chaired by Peter Gibbs (From BBC R4 Gardeners’ Question Time and our local ‘Weather Man’). Find out if heat-pumps will work for you.
