How to use the Heritage Energy Efficiency Toolkit
Use the HEET worksheet to work through the guides in the following steps to assess your building's heritage value and condition and explore options for energy efficiency improvements and renewable technologies.
1. What is the heritage value of your building?
The Understanding your Historic Building guide will help you consider whether your building has a particular heritage value due to its appearance, form of construction, the history it has witnessed or the place it occupies in an historic neighbourhood.
Use our Building Heritage Assessment Template to record your building's special features.
2. How important is it to keep a maintenance and repair regime to make your building more energy efficient?
Before making big investments, the Maintenance to Save Energy in Historic Buildings guide will help you consider how repairing and maintaining your building could make it more comfortable and save on energy and heating bills. Maintaining buildings in good order, preventing draughts and dealing with causes of damp should always be the first steps towards making buildings more efficient.
Use our Historic Building Health Check to look for evidence of where maintenance may increase energy efficiency and check our list of basic maintenance tasks.
3. Which simple changes can be made in the way the building is used to help you save energy?
Simple Changes to Save Energy in Historic Buildings highlights small changes in habits that can help save energy without involving significant interventions in your building including more efficient use of your heating, lighting and ventilation.
4. Which generic energy efficiency measures can be adopted that respect the heritage value of your building?
What scale of investment can you expect to implement the changes?
The Energy Efficiency Measures in Historic Buildings guide provides advice on a range of energy efficiency measures chosen to suit your historic building according to its age and form of construction.
This will help you consider which of these might be appropriate for your building and will highlight whether you would need advice from a conservation specialist or our planning department.
In addition the guide will provide some considerations on the scale of the investment needed to implement the changes, as well as the likely energy efficiency benefits and payback period.
5. Which clean energy generating technologies can be installed that respect the heritage value of your building?
Generating Low Carbon Energy will help you consider the choice of clean energy generating technologies available to protect your historic building's character.
The guide will provide an indication of the scale of investment needed to implement changes, the likely energy benefits and payback period.
