August 21, 2025 • 42 mins
We dive into the world of energy efficiency for village and community halls with experts Andy Mitchell and Phil Strickland from 21 Degrees, exploring practical solutions to reduce carbon footprints and energy costs.
• Heat pumps can work effectively in any reasonably insulated building when properly designed and installed
• Understanding the difference between how boilers and heat pumps heat spaces is crucial for optimal efficiency
• Insulation fundamentally changes a building's physics, requiring careful consideration of moisture management
• Mechanical heat recovery ventilation systems improve air quality while maintaining energy efficiency
• EV charging points offer village halls an opportunity to provide valuable services to their communities
• Solar panels work even on cloudy days and can be integrated with EV chargers and battery storage
Entries are now open for the Village Halls Inspiration Awards 2025, celebrating the incredible work happening in village, community and church halls across the country. You can apply between the 1st of May and the 30th of September, so do consider putting your hall forward.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Marc Smith (00:01):
Hi, I'm Marc Smith and welcome to the Village Halls
podcast sponsored by AlliedWestminster, the UK's largest
specialist provider of VillageHall insurance, and the home of
Village Guard.
Before we begin, a quickreminder that entries are now
open for the Village HallsInspiration Awards 2025,
celebrating the incredible workhappening in village, community
(00:24):
and church halls across thecountry.
You can apply between the 1stof May and the 30th of September
, so do consider putting yourhall forward.
In this episode, we are divinginto the world of energy
efficiency, something more andmore village halls across the
country are striving towards ontheir path to net zero.
It's great to see so manycommunity buildings taking the
(00:45):
lead, and today we'recelebrating just that.
I'm joined by Andy Mitchell andPhil Strickland, from 21 Degrees
experts in energy efficiencysolutions.
So, no matter the type ofbuilding, Andy and Phil bring a
wealth of knowledge andpractical advice, and they're
actively helping halls andorganisations across the UK
improve their energy use andreduce their carbon footprint.
(01:06):
So, whether you're juststarting your energy journey or
already halfway there, thisepisode is packed with ideas and
inspiration to help you takethe next step.
Let's get started.
Welcome to the podcast, Andyand Phil.
Phil Stricland (01:20):
Morning, good morning.
Marc Smith (01:21):
So you both work with 21 Degrees.
Can you tell me a little bitabout where 21 Degrees came from
and what your roles are at thecompany?
Andy Mitchell (01:31):
Shall, I start Phil.
Phil Stricland (01:32):
Go.
Andy Mitchell (01:36):
So 21 Degrees is effectively a collection of
businesses that have developedsince 2020.
We're operating partly on whatwe call a buy-to-build model, so
that's under a vision ofdelivering much better
sustainable homes and broaderbuildings.
So it includes commercialacross the UK and so there's
(02:01):
been a number of businesses thathave been bought, which kind of
networks from kind of Yorkmostly down the east and then
across to Poole down in Dorsetsupply and installation service
(02:29):
of products that deliver betterenergy efficiency, better energy
use, but also, with that,health and comfort, because
they're all kind of interlinkedyeah yeah, so yeah, excellent.
Marc Smith (02:38):
What about yourself, phil?
What do you do at 21 degrees?
Phil Stricland (02:41):
so I'm the technical operations director,
so I'm responsible foressentially helping improve how
we deliver quality installationsand broadly improve what we
provide for the customers acrossthe board.
Marc Smith (03:03):
Right, I'm going to start off strong here.
So how important is design andplanning when it comes to
retrospective energy efficiency?
Andy Mitchell (03:11):
essential, unless you don't want to do it
properly yeah, because what Iwas a?
Marc Smith (03:20):
I saw I think it was phil you on your LinkedIn.
You were talking about heatpumps and a lot of people
obviously have a bugbear withheat pumps and I know very
little about heat pumps, but Ialways presume that it's through
lack of planning really.
Phil Stricland (03:37):
Yeah, that's exactly it.
I mean the design of theinstallation of a heat pump is
critical.
So I mean a heat pump can go,can be installed into pretty
much any property as long asit's designed and installed
correctly.
I mean I say that with a pinchof salt because there's
obviously extremes of properties.
You've got very old propertieswith you know leaky, drafty
(04:01):
windows and doors and that sortof stuff.
So you know you're pushing theenvelope there right up to you
know very well new buildproperties up to sort of you
know sort of passive house whichis extremely well insulated,
very airtight buildings.
But in simple terms, you know areasonably well insulated, you
know property with double glazedwindows is perfect for a heat
(04:25):
pump.
So once you've got that kind ofproperty, you're now down to
designing a heat pump system forthat property.
As long as you design itefficiently and install it well,
then you're going to get highefficiency levels from that heat
pump and that's the criticalpart.
Marc Smith (04:45):
And do they work in village halls or say it was a
large village hall, then you'regoing to get high efficiency
levels from that heat pump, andthat's the critical part.
And do they work in villagehalls or say it was a large
village hall is there alimitation of how much space a
heat pump can heat, or is it?
Just basically bringing abigger heat pump?
Phil Stricland (04:58):
No, absolutely yeah, you can put them pretty
much into any building, andvillage halls are perfect for
that.
We've done a lot ofinstallations in all types of
village halls, sports halls andall sorts of stuff like that.
But yeah, fundamentally theycome in all shapes and sizes.
You can double them up and doall sorts of stuff with them.
Whether they're air source orground source, extracting heat
from the ground.
There's lots of different waysto design and install them.
(05:21):
So yeah, very much so, I thinkthe biggest challenge Marc comes
from?
Andy Mitchell (05:25):
uh, just the primary understanding.
I think people, uh, you knowthere's layers to this, so it's
not a gas boiler, um, a gasboiler, gas as a as a fossil
fuel is an incredibly cheapenergy source.
Uh, despite looking at our gasbill, it is actually still
remarkably, it is actually stillremarkably cheap form of energy
in reality.
(05:46):
And a heat pump is a differenttech, but effectively they're
doing the same thing, which isproviding a heat load into the
property to try and match theheat requirement of that
property.
And I think the key thing isthat it is different tech, you
(06:06):
know.
So a gas boiler generally pusheswater.
You heat water up, you push itthrough some pipe work into
radiators and the radiators youremitters, and they heat the
room.
But actually the flow rates arerelatively quick and the heat
temperature of that water isrelatively high.
You'll know that.
You know you lean up againstthe radiator.
Sometimes it's like, oh, that'sa bit bit hot.
You don't get that with a heatpump.
(06:28):
The flow is slower and thetemperature that is actually
being pushed around is lower.
So therefore it'll do the samejob.
It's energy in and energy out,but it's just different and I
think people kind of just expectit to be completely different.
You know, it's a bit likegetting into an electric car and
expecting it to behave the sameas a petrol car.
It doesn't.
(06:48):
You know, there's aspects of itthat are familiar Four wheels,
windscreen, steering wheel butactually your interface with the
car is different.
You know, particularly if yougo for the most obvious one for
those who've driven is is thekind of one pedal system where
you take your foot off theaccelerator assuming the car
(07:09):
sets up this way and it actuallyslows it down because it's got
regen braking, um.
So you can end up just doingone pedal driving, um.
But people aren't familiar withthat you know, so it it's.
There's actually quite a lot ofeducation.
That's also needed, you know.
So, phil.
Phil's completely right.
You can heat pretty much anyspace with a heat pump, but it
could cost you an awful lot ofmoney.
You know to do that justbecause of the way in which they
(07:32):
they operate.
Marc Smith (07:34):
All right when you put a heat pump in, is there
anything you have to considerwith the hall If it's old, do
you say, right, well, we need toinsulate first.
We need to do this first,before we even think about
bringing it in.
Phil Stricland (07:46):
No, absolutely yeah.
So we're always.
You know well any type ofheating system.
You want to insulate first,because obviously that's going
to reduce your fuel bills.
So you always want to belooking at reducing air leakage
from a building, so that'saround your windows and doors,
things like that and insulating.
You know the fabric of thebuilding, you know the walls,
(08:09):
you know the loft insulation,things like that.
That's the first thing you wantto be looking at and then you
want to be looking at how theproperty is being used.
So if it is a village hall asopposed to a home which is used
predominantly throughout the day, typically a village hall can
be used very, very differently.
So some are used a lotthroughout the day and some
(08:34):
could be used a few times a weekand that makes a big difference
to how you could potentiallyuse the pump and the sorts of
emitters that you'd put into it,because there's no point having
, you know, underfloor heatingin a village hall that's used a
few times a week, becauseunderfloor heating is a very
slow form of heat that takes awhile to heat up, which is not
(08:56):
going to be any good if you'regoing to, you know, if you want
it on at 10 o'clock on a Tuesdayand 10 o'clock on a Friday and
it's going to take a few hoursto warm up each time, that's not
a very good way of trying toheat that space.
So you want a very quick way ofpushing heat into the room, into
the space, for the few times aweek that you're going to use it
(09:17):
in that scenario.
So you need to think aboutthose things because with
underfloor heating.
You really want to keep thespace heated throughout the week
, on all the time?
Yeah, so you know.
You need to find out fromwhoever's using the hall how
it's used throughout the time ifit's a village hall how it's
used throughout the week.
Otherwise they're going to beheating it unnecessarily when
(09:40):
they don't need to be.
So yeah there are otherconsiderations that need to be
thought about.
Marc Smith (09:45):
So when it comes, to insulation.
Obviously there's so manydifferent types.
So, say, the majority ofobviously the village halls will
be older buildings.
What are the types ofinsulation that you can actually
put in to these?
Especially, I suppose, ifthey're historic, it makes it a
bit harder as well.
You can't exactly just ripwalls down willy-nilly to put
insulation in.
(10:06):
What are the options that someof these older halls have got
when it comes to insulation?
Andy Mitchell (10:10):
Well, the key thing to remember is, when
you're applying an insulation toa property, you're changing the
physics of the building.
You're changing the way inwhich both heat and moisture
move through the building fabric, so you have got to be quite
careful.
Generally speaking, it doesvery much depend on the
(10:31):
construction.
So if you've got a cavity wallconstruction, then you could
potentially fill the cavity wall, although you've got to be
careful there, because somecavity construction is quite
poor and therefore there's a lotof foreign stuff in in the wall
that fell in when it was beingbuilt, which can cause problems
afterwards um yeah, yeah.
So so it's not a given that youcan just fill that with
(10:52):
insulation.
If you're in an area of highdriven rain, then you can cause
other problems because you canend up with moisture tracking
across.
People often think thatcavities were designed to keep
the rain out.
That's not true at all.
It was just a cheaper way ofbuilding.
I really suppose yeah, yeah yeah, no, if you go on the continent
(11:12):
, they maintain solid masonrywalls for well, they still do.
Frankly, they've changed theway in which the composition of
the block is used, but it'smonolithic.
Construction in mainland Europeis still common.
It's just if you've got acheaper block or cheaper brick
on the inside than an outsideand tie them together.
It's a cheaper way ofconstruction.
So that's the principal reasonwhy we ended up with the Cavity
(11:42):
War, which was only reallyintroduced in anger in the 20,
in the 1930s.
So so there are cavity warsbefore then, but, but not as
much.
Most masonry wars are solidbefore then and and they are
more than adequate to keep therain out, and if they're not in
a particular area, then theywere rendered.
That's why we have render onproperties.
I think we've forgotten this.
Render is as was applied tobuildings, for practical reasons
first, and not to make themlook pretty.
Um, you know, brick is porousand it stops stops the rain
(12:04):
actually tracking through thebrickwork.
Um, yeah, I learned thisrecently because I had to put in
a like a, like a waterprooferinto some mortar I was mixing up
to put on the wall, becausesome of it had basically blown
away in the wind yeah yes, soyeah, yeah, I didn't realize
that was actually yeah, I mean,in scotland, you may or may not
notice that the the render isusually more coarse, um, uh, the
(12:26):
furthest further north you go,and that's generally to reduce
the impact of the rain, which isusually driving harder, um, so
it reduces the amount of energythat's hitting the surface of
the outside of the wall.
So there's loads and loads ofpractical reasons why we built
and I think, sadly, over theyears, we've kind of forgotten
the reason why we did thesethings.
You know, um, we just think,like I say it's, you know you,
(12:49):
you look at various, you knowseaside towns.
You are, they've done it tomake it look all pretty with the
colors and it's like, nah, it'sthere for a practical reason.
Um, they've added a color in,for sure.
You know, yeah, yeah, okay, butI mean, you know the stuff had
to be on the wall, it wasn'tjust to make it look pretty.
Uh, all right, right, so soback to the insulation.
So you've either got external orinternal insulation on a solid
(13:09):
wall.
Um, if you do internal, you cancause problems.
Uh, to do with the fact you'venow cooled down the wall because
you've got insulation on theinside and therefore, if you're
not careful, moisture thattracks through the insulation
which it will, could condense onthe inside surface of the wall
something called interstitialcondensation, which can then
cause problems with the wholebuilding fabric.
So really you want to.
(13:31):
If you're internally insulating, I'd stick to products such as
diethanite, which is like a, acork and a mineral mix, or
something like wood fibre,because they're the only real
ones that seem to deal properlywith the moisture issue.
Go externally and you can startto use things like XPS, so
extruded polystyrene.
You can use wood fibre again.
That tends to be a bit moreexpensive and you're effectively
(13:53):
tea cosying the building.
The problem with that, goingback to Phil's earlier point, is
you know how often are youusing the building.
So if you tea-cozy the outsideof a village hall and you're
only using it in the eveningseach week, then you've got to
wait for the whole of theinternal what is now the
internal brickwork to completelyheat up before actually it's
going to start feeling warm.
Marc Smith (14:17):
So yeah, all right.
Yeah, insulation on the outside, so outside.
So could sorry, you have toexcuse me, could you explain
that how obviously?
I know the ticosi um metaphorbut, like how does that actually
work?
How do you put stuff on theoutside the building space,
because each building is shapeddifferently.
Do you have to purpose, make adifferent like polystyrene.
(14:37):
Is it polystyrene, or is thatokay?
Well, it can be so let'sPS isextruded polystyrene.
Andy Mitchell (14:41):
You can have wood fibre, which is they're usually
what we call semi-rigid sheets.
So if you picked them up, theydon't flop around.
And you, I mean there'smultiple methods, so the solid
sheets you would fasten back tothe structure.
That depends on what thestructure is.
So if it's timber frame, thenyou're in a whole different
(15:03):
world and arguably you probablywouldn't want to be doing that.
You'd want to approach itdifferently.
If it's timber frame, you mayfind, if you remove the cladding
, you've got voids in the studwork, in which case you could
look at installing a mineralwool.
But again, you want to becareful about moisture.
So you need to put membranesand stuff in to make sure that
the moisture can basically getout more quickly than it got in.
Um.
(15:23):
You you've got a situationwhere you've got um, if you've
got masonry building, then youcan fasten, uh, insulation to
the outside of that and then youcan either clad over the
insulation or you could renderdirectly onto the insulation.
I mean, there's a spectrum ofstuff.
I think it's a bit like ifsomebody who'd never lived in a
climate, um, like we have onthis planet, okay, uh, and they
(15:49):
were just used to walking aroundin a t-shirt and a jumper.
Okay, and you and they said toyou so so what kind of clothing
do I wear outside?
yeah, you probably wouldn't sayI would just wear one of these.
Yeah, you'd say well, itdepends on what kind of weather
is.
What do you mean?
Well, it could be, it could besunny, you know, or it could be
windy, in which case it's winter.
So, okay, you're dry, but youjust need to make sure that the
(16:10):
wind doesn't take all your heatoff your body.
So you want to wear probably athin kind of um product that
allows the moisture to get outof you, you know from.
Otherwise you'll get all superwet because you're just wearing
a plastic bag and suddenly yourealize, actually there's yeah
there's quite a complexity tothis, and it's exactly the same
with buildings well, you've,you've proved the point there of
planning you really need toplan before you do anything.
Marc Smith (16:33):
That's the best reason to plan, because there's
so many variables there are.
So, I suppose, when it comes toinsulation, all I think is
glass, wool and pir board.
But would you consider glazingindoors as an insulator?
Or because if you have tripleglaze windows, is that there to
to stop the heat escaping, or tolook pretty, or what's the?
(16:54):
No, what are they categorizedas really?
So triple, triple glazing.
Andy Mitchell (17:00):
So different terms and different things.
So if you've got a, so you'veeither got a frame and that
frame may move, so that'susually referred to as a sash.
It doesn't have to slide, itcould be on hinges, um, or it
could be a fixed window frame,so there's no moving components.
But then you've got a, a glazedsection which is either single,
double or triple.
Occasionally you can getquadruple, but I mean that's it
(17:21):
depends where you components.
But then you've got a glazedsection which is either single,
double or triple.
Occasionally you can getquadruple, but I mean it depends
where you live.
The primary benefit of movingfrom to double or to triple is
to reduce the amount of heatloss through the glazed area.
But there's a secondary benefitwhen you move to triple glazing
, which is to do with comfort.
So effectively what you'redoing is normally your double
(17:43):
glaze or triple glaze units arefilled with something called
argon, which is a slower movinggas than air.
So the heat transfer from oneglass the inner plane of glass
to the external plane of glassis slower, because the energy
just moves more.
The gas is more viscous, so theenergy transfer is slower
because the energy just movesmore the the gas is more viscous
, so the energy transfer isslower um.
So therefore your heat loss outof the the building is is is
(18:06):
reduced um.
With triple you're kind ofimproving that significantly
again um.
But the.
But the big difference reallywith triple versus double is the
inner pane of glass is muchcloser to the internal
temperature of the space.
So, as human beings, we oftenthink it's the air temperature
(18:28):
that kind of makes us feel warm.
That's partly true, but themain reason why you feel warm as
a human being is to do withsomething called radiant heat.
So if you're outside in a sunnyday and a cloud goes in front
of the sun, you go oh, it's gota bit chilly, chilly, but the
air temperature hasn't changed,it's exactly the same.
It's because, actually, thatradiant heat has been cut off.
Yeah, um, so the reason why youfeel warm, usually in a room, is
(18:50):
normally because, um, thesurface temperatures, the table,
the chair you're sat in, thewalls, um have a temperature
that's pretty close to the roomtemperature.
You feel less comfortable andmore cold when those
temperatures don't match theroom temperature, which is why,
(19:12):
when you stand close to singleglazing, you feel uncomfortable,
particularly in the winter,because actually the surface
temperature of that glass ismuch colder and you can
literally feel the heat pullingaway from your, your body.
With triple glazing, thetemperature and difference is
only about sort of three, fourdegrees and generally, as human
beings, we don't tend to noticethat.
Phil Stricland (19:32):
So those, those are the primary reasons it's
partly about heat loss partlyabout comfort all right, that's
a beautiful, beautiful segueinto a big difference between
boilers and heat pumps.
A boiler pushes very hightemperature heat into the room
via the radiators and basicallytries to heat the air, or does
(19:53):
just basically heat the air offthe radiator and just pushes the
air around the room and thenbasically overheats that air and
the radiators click off andthen it all cools down again and
then the radiators click onagain and they just go through
that cycle on and off, butthey're just basically heating
the air in the room.
And that's where you get thesevariations in temperature across
(20:14):
the room and whereas with aheat pump you're not heating the
space, the room, in the sameway.
As Andy was saying earlier.
It's a much more eventemperature, it's a lower
temperature that you're pushinginto the room over a longer
period of time.
And what you end up doing is youend up heating all the fabric
(20:35):
in the room, the walls of theroom up to the up to a
temperature of the temperatureyou've selected 21 degrees into
the room, so that over time thatall gets reflected back into
the room off those hard umbuilding fabric into the room as
well.
So you end up with everythingwithin the room becoming the
(20:55):
same temperature rather thanjust the air temperature in the
room.
So things aren't clicking onand off all the time.
Everything becomes 21 degrees,so it becomes much more
comfortable and the occupants inthe room become much more
comfortable within that room aswell.
So it doesn't really matterwhether it's under floor or
radiators.
With a with a heat pump,everything just becomes very,
(21:17):
very calm.
And and the efficiency from theheat pump comes from that as
well, in the fact that you'reyou're just slowly um pushing
that heat into the room at amuch lower temperature, rather
than pushing a high temperatureinto the room like a boiler,
you're just trickling heat intothat room, which is where the
efficiency comes from, and thatheat is then getting slowly
(21:40):
radiated back into the room fromall that, from the walls and
the hard fixtures in the room,and that that is just much more
comfortable as a as human beings, and you can generally have the
room a little bit cooler, set alittle bit cooler than you
would with a boiler as well,because it's more comfortable.
It feels more comfortable tothe occupants as well.
Marc Smith (22:01):
And are heat pumps obviously more energy efficient?
Are they reasonable to run aswell like cost-wise?
Phil Stricland (22:08):
Yeah, yeah.
So again, as long as you've gota reasonably you know well
insulated property, um, so youknow, if it's very, very leaky,
you know so you've got singleglazed windows, poor insulation
and gaps around your doors, thena heat pump's going to struggle
so it's not that it won't do it.
(22:29):
You could put a heat pump intoany property, but at the bottom
end of that scale you knowyou're going to be, the heat
pump's going to have to workpretty hard, and that's when a
heat pump becomes less efficient.
So as long as you're.
As long as you've got a propertyyou know um older properties
you want to start insulating,first getting rid of your air
leakage, and then you startgetting the heat pump into its
(22:52):
optimum efficiency window, whereyou can start dropping the flow
temperatures through yourradiators, underfloor heating,
whatever and then you startgetting the efficiencies up.
That's when the the costs startdropping right.
Marc Smith (23:07):
Are there tests to do so?
If you went into village hall,would you do a certain number of
tests to say, look, this iswhat's what type, what you need
to do before you put the heatbump in, or what would you?
I mean we, certainly do.
Phil Stricland (23:19):
I mean we do a site visit and we'd look, look
around at um and you can I meannot a test, but you can quite
quickly see um, you know whatsort of insulation the property
has, what sort of glazing theproperty has.
We certainly love the villagehall but you know, in properties
generally we'd look at the loftinsulation measure that, see
how much insulation is up thereand advise them on.
(23:43):
You know what sort of level ofefficiency we'd kind of expect
from that kind of property andwhat sort of costs they're
likely to see from that.
We'd do some expect from thatkind of property and what sort
of uh cost they're likely to seefrom that.
We'd do some calculations onthat.
Yes, um, because becauseessentially you know if they're
switching from a traditionalboiler to to a heat pump, you
know they're going to want tosee what sort of efficiencies
(24:05):
and what sort of running costthey're going to get from that.
Marc Smith (24:09):
Yeah, I've got a couple of topics.
I want to discuss the first one.
I was unsure if it was going tobe worth talking about, if it
was relevant for village halls,but it's heat recovery.
So well, number one what isheat recovery?
Uh.
And number two do the work invillage halls and does the
village hall?
Would it have to be a brand newpassive hall before you put it
(24:36):
in?
Phil Stricland (24:37):
Okay, so what is it?
So?
Heat recovery is a ventilationsystem which enables you to
extract the stale air from aproperty from building to the
outside, bringing fresh air, andrecover the lost heat from the
outgoing air to the incoming air.
(24:58):
So it's a very efficient way ofventilating property and making
it the air very comfortable andbalanced within a property.
So typically you'd install thatinto a new build, especially
when the when the air leakagewithin that build is kept
(25:22):
relatively low yeah let's put itand certainly when you're
getting up toward what we callpassive health standard, which
is a very airtight, very wellinsulated property, then you
would definitely need some formof mechanical ventilation system
that we're talking about.
But yeah, it's very you know,we would normally recommend it
in a well-built, new-buildproperty, right, because it's a
(25:47):
very efficient way ofventilating the property and it
does mean that you don't needtrickle vents in your windows.
Marc Smith (25:54):
Oh really.
Phil Stricland (25:56):
Which are a poor way of ventilating a
property.
And you don't need extractorfans in your bathrooms or
kitchen Because it replaces allof that.
Because when you're building aproperty, you're basically, you
know you're insulating it verywell, you're getting rid of all
the, because you're building aproperty, a new build, you're
(26:17):
getting rid of all the airleakage hopefully.
So you're building a nice, youknow envelope, you're insulating
it well, and then, from abuilding perspective, you need
to ventilate that property.
So building regulationsbasically then say so, you need
to ventilate this, so we'regoing to bash holes in it, so
(26:39):
we're going to drill holes in itand we're going to put
ventilation extractor fans inthe bathrooms and kitchen and
we're going to insist that youput these little vents above all
the windows which you need tohave open all the time.
You put these little ventsabove all the windows which you
need to have open all the time,which means that when it's windy
, outdoor air whatevertemperature it is in the middle
of winter could be minus three,minus five is going to blow into
(27:04):
your bedrooms and living spacesand cool the house down, and
that's your ventilation.
And you need ventilation,otherwise you'll get damp and
the air will be stale and you'llget all sorts of problems.
So you need the ventilation,but that's how building
regulations say you shouldachieve it, which is a poor way
of ventilating a property, butthat's one way of achieving it.
(27:26):
That's a cheap way of achievingit, but it is by far the best
way of achieving it all righthaving a ventilation system, a
mechanical ventilation system,which is basically two fans, one
in, one out, is a very, veryefficient, relatively cheap way
of doing it and running thosefans.
(27:47):
Um, there's a small cost indoing that.
Yeah, it's completely offset bythe gains you'll get from not
having that cold air coming intoyour house and the savings
you'll get from the uh, from thefact that you don't need to
reheat that that cold air that'scoming into your house, yeah,
yeah, and you can put that inany property with a, with a
(28:08):
small cabin.
Andy Mitchell (28:09):
Yeah, there's a small limit to that.
So, so you measure your house,um, in terms of air leakage and
there's various targets.
So building regs is five meters, cubed meters, squares of fifth
pascals, don't worry about that.
Um, uh, generally anythingbelow three is where your heat
recovery makes sense.
Um, above three, and actuallyyour building's going to be so
leaky that the energy that yourecover is kind of basically
(28:33):
going to be working against theleakiness of the building.
So the heat energy you recoverwill be kind of lost because of
the leakiness of the building.
So there is a sweet spot,although the other benefit is,
as Phil's described, becauseit's ducted.
Ok, so you're bringing, you'retaking out stale air from wet
rooms and you're bringing infresh air into cold rooms with
(28:53):
the heat recovery part.
In the middle there's alsofilters in the unit, so you will
.
As a result, if you're a hayfever sufferer, then you usually
have a marked increase inimproved health in terms of hay
fever suffering and, equally,there is plenty of evidence now
(29:16):
around improved eczema andimproved asthma for those who
suffer with that condition.
Because of the quality of theair that ends up in the property
.
You're effectively shiftingaway from uncontrolled
ventilation to controlledventilation and when you do that
, you benefit from cleaner air,which is often sort of
(29:37):
overlooked sometimes because youthink it's all about energy.
Phil Stricland (29:39):
And again, it's not just about energy, it's
also about air, and there's alsoa benefit in cities as well,
where the air quality is not sogood.
Yeah, yeah, really good pointand the other thing it does it
also controls the humidity inthe property as well.
So the humidity in propertiesin an uncontrolled ventilated
(30:02):
property is completelyuncontrolled.
You've got the extractor fansbut they're just basically
sucking out the air from yourbathrooms and kitchen Humidity
in the property as a whole iscompletely uncontrolled, whereas
in a property with a kind ofventilation system you can
control that quite well some ofthem very well and a property
(30:27):
that's controlled there, with asystem like that, property
that's controlled there, with asystem in like that, the
humidity can be controlledpretty accurately and is much
more comfortable for theoccupants.
Marc Smith (30:40):
Yeah that's amazing.
Phil Stricland (30:43):
Yeah, so often you'll find that when you're
showering in the bathroom, themirrors, the windows practically
don't steam up at all do theyreally all?
right, so easy because thehumidity is kept, you know,
pretty low all the time.
Yeah, so there are quite a lotof benefits to it, yeah, but, as
I said, you know, you askedabout village halls, but yes,
you can put them in villagehalls as well.
(31:04):
Um, so if you've got, uh, youknow, we we put one into a
village hall that was used forsports, so they had showers and
stuff there for the sportsfacilities, which was a new
build property.
(31:25):
So, yeah, there was benefitsfrom because they were used
quite a lot for the sportsshowering.
Marc Smith (31:30):
Yeah, very interesting that.
So basically don't do what Idid and put spray foam into the
window vent to stop the raincoming in.
Phil Stricland (31:37):
No.
Andy Mitchell (31:38):
Otherwise you'll Absolutely not.
Marc Smith (31:41):
So yeah, the last topic I'd like to discuss is, I
suppose, electric vehiclechargers.
I suppose obviously the worldis going that way with cars and
I think a good thing for villagehalls to do is to actually have
charging stations on theirvillage hall.
Because you say, if you come towhere I am, there's probably
(32:02):
about I don't know, maybe fivecharging points in the whole of
the isla sky.
And so I know my partner'sfather drives over from holland
in his electric car and he'salways like where do I charge up
?
And everything's like a stress.
So all these little ruralcommunities could really benefit
from having electric carchargers on their on their
building.
But how easy is it to do that?
Because obviously they theytake a lot of energy and and
(32:26):
they might cost a lot to put in.
So what's the process of ofgetting started with ev chargers
for village halls?
Phil Stricland (32:34):
yes, so, um.
So yeah, 21 degrees.
We do install um electric carchargers and they can be
installed pretty much on anyproperty um or even standalone
um.
But yeah, I mean they'rerelatively easy to install.
Um there is that they obviouslyneed power.
So we need to look at the poweravailability on the property.
(32:57):
So if you are remote, you knowthat can be a limitation.
But in most cases that can bedealt with by talking to the
electricity supplier.
But it depends what you look.
I mean, if you're looking toput in a bank of them, you know
(33:17):
that becomes more of a challenge.
For a village hall, you know,typically you'd only require,
you know one or maybe two, sothat's normally not a problem.
And on a domestic property,that's, you know, you normally
only put.
Look at putting one on, sothat's not an issue at all.
On a village hall, you mightalso be looking at how you would
(33:39):
possibly recover some cost onthat, so you might.
Marc Smith (33:45):
You might be looking at some payment system around
that and there are charges whichdo that as built in so you
don't have to find an externalsupplier, you can just if it's
built in there, you don't haveto there are charges that have
systems as part of that, orthere's various apps and that
(34:06):
you can also sign up to that.
Phil Stricland (34:08):
Do that separately as well.
So there are solutions aroundthat that aren't too costly um,
that can be combined with thatas well.
Marc Smith (34:21):
Um so yeah, it's not , it's not too, and there are
grants as well.
Phil Stricland (34:23):
Excellent, yeah , yep.
So there are grants forcommercial um.
There were more grants, butthey've scaled them back a bit.
But there are still grantsavailable for commercial
situations and for people inflats and also for people who
don't have driveways.
(34:44):
So if you're parking on theroad and you need to get a cable
across a pavement, so there arevarious solutions out there
where you um, with permissionfrom the council, you can
actually drop a, a kind of flapacross the pavement which you
can lift the flap up oh really,the cable in the flat back down
(35:05):
uh, it does need.
Does need council permission toactually get that installed, but
you can get a grant towardsthat as well, assuming that you
can actually get your car on theroad outside your house because
they don't have control overwho's parking outside your
particular house.
But yeah, so there are grantsthat help towards that as well.
Marc Smith (35:29):
Excellent, and can you so obviously you'll also do
solar.
I was going to say thatobviously links towards that as
well.
Excellent, and can you, soobviously you'll also do solar I
was going to tell you thatobviously links into soda as
well, because yeah, so on theroof, can you charge a car
directly from solar, or does itneed to go into a battery bank
first so you can?
I'm not unsure if it's like a,if you need regular voltage and
if solar panels can give youthat steady supply, or does it
need to go into a huge batterybank before it?
Phil Stricland (35:51):
goes to the car , yeah, it does not need to go
straight into it.
It doesn't need to go in abattery bank.
So you can team it up withsolar and or a battery.
You can do either, or Right.
If you don't have a battery,then it just depends whether the
sun is shining or not, whetheryou have enough solar to charge
(36:12):
the car.
So there's a limit on howquickly it will charge the car.
If there's not enough solar,then it will take whatever it
comes from the solar and top itup from the grid to charge the
car right right, so it'sautomatic.
You don't need to do anything.
So the ev charger will dealwith all that for you.
So that's not an issue and itdepends how big your pv array is
(36:36):
.
So if you've got a large roof,um, you know you, you could have
a large pv array on the if it'sa village hall, for example,
you could have a large pv array.
On the village hall, for example, you could have a large pv
around the roof.
So you know, if it was anovercast day you might get half
of it off the roof and half ofit off the grid.
Charging the car right and then, or a cloud could go across and
when the cloud had disappearedthen it would all be coming off
(36:59):
the off the roof again.
Yeah, we don't get clouds inscotland.
You don't get clouds, that'slovely, it's sunny all year.
But if you had a, battery, asyou said, then obviously that
gives you more flexibility.
Yeah, the battery could then becharged from the solar um and
you could keep the batterytopped up, and if someone came
and came along to charge theircar, then it would obviously
(37:21):
charge from the battery firstand then, when the battery was
discharged, it would then takeit from the PV.
Marc Smith (37:30):
Oh, that's very smart and it all does that
automatically, automatically,yeah.
Phil Stricland (37:34):
Then you wouldn't need to do anything.
It would all be automatic.
So it would be set up to be.
Marc Smith (37:38):
That's amazing.
So are solar panels asefficient?
Sorry are they.
Can they absorb um energy whenthe clouds are there?
Is it just reduced or?
Is it completely zero.
Andy Mitchell (37:51):
No, no, I think people think it's always to do
with, you know, direct sunlightand all the rest of it.
I thought that, yeah, there'soptimal times and obviously you
get a lot more energy when it isuh, when it is a clear day, but
, um, no, uh, you, you get umvarying rates, but you, you
still get it.
And there's, there's somepanels actually, which um will
pick up um, uh, solar, uh energy, even on the reverse, assuming
(38:15):
that you space them correctlyand stuff.
So, um, oh, very cool thetechnology is developing all the
time, uh, but they do do runhand in hand very much with the
battery for sure, as Phil's beenexplaining.
Marc Smith (38:25):
Yeah.
Phil Stricland (38:27):
And actually the most optimum is not the
height of the summer, because asthey get hotter they lose
efficiency slightly.
So you want a nice, bright,sunny, cold day.
It's the optimum day.
Marc Smith (38:39):
Yeah, that would be the opposite of what I would do.
Yeah, it's the optimum day.
Phil Stricland (38:41):
Yeah that would be the opposite of what I would
have thought.
Marc Smith (38:43):
Yeah, it's interesting, cold and bright.
Phil Stricland (38:47):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's true yes, any sunlight
helps, but the brighter it is,the better.
Marc Smith (38:53):
Excellent, so 21 degrees.
So where about in the country,do you cover?
Andy Mitchell (39:04):
Well, it really depends on the solutions that
you're looking for.
So, in terms of performance,windows and doors, that's
national.
The same with mechanicalventilation, heat recovery,
that's also national.
That's in terms of design andsupply with windows, we
installed too.
If it's the renewabletechnology, so that's heat pumps
(39:25):
, batteries, voltage, solar andev charges, then we're more
geographically based,predominantly in england rather
than the whole of the uk, but wealso in those instances we also
install.
So it's the whole packagetogether in that case, and we're
constantly growing anddeveloping all the time.
So actually we are looking atdeveloping into Scotland fairly
(39:47):
soon.
Marc Smith (39:49):
So can you do.
At present do you kind ofremote site visits if it's a bit
out of the way, if you've gotanyone in that area, if someone
was asking about their villagehall At the moment we're a bit
limited with that.
Andy Mitchell (40:02):
It really depends on the technology that you're
looking for.
So certainly with things likePVs and heat pumps we would
struggle.
We don't cover those areas.
So, for example, at the momentwe don't actually cover the
northwest of England.
So that's outside our limit.
(40:22):
But we do, um, we do do somework with the ventilation uh
systems and we do do some workwith the uh the performance, uh,
the windows and doors that'sgreat.
Marc Smith (40:33):
So what I will do, though, for everyone, I will put
a link to your website onto thepodcast page so anyone that is
looking for um energy efficiency, uh help can go on there and
see what you guys do, becauseI've been on the website a few
times now before our um podcast.
It is, it's a lovely website.
It looks really nice actually,uh, but it's actually filled
with information as well.
(40:54):
Uh, it's a brilliant websiteactually.
I can see the effort that'sgone into that, uh, so, yeah,
well, thank you very much, uh,for your time.
Uh, today.
Phil and andy is really, reallyappreciated.
I've probably got twice as manyquestions still in my head, um,
but yeah, it's well.
Thank you so much for coming on.
It's been a real pleasure tospeak with you thanks very much
(41:15):
thank you very much no problem.
Many thanks to our headlinesponsor and specialist village
hall insurance provider, AlliedAllied Westminster, the home of
Village Guard, for making thispodcast possible, and to online
booking system provider,Hallmaster, who also sponsor our
podcast and can be found atHallmaster.
co.
(41:35):
uk.
You've been listening to theVillage Halls podcast, a unique
listening community forBritain's village community and
church halls and anyoneinterested in the vital services
they provide.
Don't forget entries for theVillage Halls Inspiration Awards
2025 are open now until the30th of September, so visit our
website to find out more and getinvolved.
(41:57):
We will be back again soon withanother episode.
For more information, visitthevillagehallspodcast.
com, where you'll also findlinks to our social media pages.
Thanks again for listening inand until next time.
Goodbye for now.
Hi, I'm Marc Smith and welcome to the Village Halls
podcast sponsored by AlliedWestminster, the UK's largest
specialist provider of VillageHall insurance, and the home of
Village Guard.
Before we begin, a quickreminder that entries are now
open for the Village HallsInspiration Awards 2025,
celebrating the incredible workhappening in village, community
(00:24):
and church halls across thecountry.
You can apply between the 1stof May and the 30th of September
, so do consider putting yourhall forward.
In this episode, we are divinginto the world of energy
efficiency, something more andmore village halls across the
country are striving towards ontheir path to net zero.
It's great to see so manycommunity buildings taking the
(00:45):
lead, and today we'recelebrating just that.
I'm joined by Andy Mitchell andPhil Strickland, from 21 Degrees
experts in energy efficiencysolutions.
So, no matter the type ofbuilding, Andy and Phil bring a
wealth of knowledge andpractical advice, and they're
actively helping halls andorganisations across the UK
improve their energy use andreduce their carbon footprint.
(01:06):
So, whether you're juststarting your energy journey or
already halfway there, thisepisode is packed with ideas and
inspiration to help you takethe next step.
Let's get started.
Welcome to the podcast, Andyand Phil.
Phil Stricland (01:20):
Morning, good morning.
Marc Smith (01:21):
So you both work with 21 Degrees.
Can you tell me a little bitabout where 21 Degrees came from
and what your roles are at thecompany?
Andy Mitchell (01:31):
Shall, I start Phil.
Phil Stricland (01:32):
Go.
Andy Mitchell (01:36):
So 21 Degrees is effectively a collection of
businesses that have developedsince 2020.
We're operating partly on whatwe call a buy-to-build model, so
that's under a vision ofdelivering much better
sustainable homes and broaderbuildings.
So it includes commercialacross the UK and so there's
(02:01):
been a number of businesses thathave been bought, which kind of
networks from kind of Yorkmostly down the east and then
across to Poole down in Dorsetsupply and installation service
(02:29):
of products that deliver betterenergy efficiency, better energy
use, but also, with that,health and comfort, because
they're all kind of interlinkedyeah yeah, so yeah, excellent.
Marc Smith (02:38):
What about yourself, phil?
What do you do at 21 degrees?
Phil Stricland (02:41):
so I'm the technical operations director,
so I'm responsible foressentially helping improve how
we deliver quality installationsand broadly improve what we
provide for the customers acrossthe board.
Marc Smith (03:03):
Right, I'm going to start off strong here.
So how important is design andplanning when it comes to
retrospective energy efficiency?
Andy Mitchell (03:11):
essential, unless you don't want to do it
properly yeah, because what Iwas a?
Marc Smith (03:20):
I saw I think it was phil you on your LinkedIn.
You were talking about heatpumps and a lot of people
obviously have a bugbear withheat pumps and I know very
little about heat pumps, but Ialways presume that it's through
lack of planning really.
Phil Stricland (03:37):
Yeah, that's exactly it.
I mean the design of theinstallation of a heat pump is
critical.
So I mean a heat pump can go,can be installed into pretty
much any property as long asit's designed and installed
correctly.
I mean I say that with a pinchof salt because there's
obviously extremes of properties.
You've got very old propertieswith you know leaky, drafty
(04:01):
windows and doors and that sortof stuff.
So you know you're pushing theenvelope there right up to you
know very well new buildproperties up to sort of you
know sort of passive house whichis extremely well insulated,
very airtight buildings.
But in simple terms, you know areasonably well insulated, you
know property with double glazedwindows is perfect for a heat
(04:25):
pump.
So once you've got that kind ofproperty, you're now down to
designing a heat pump system forthat property.
As long as you design itefficiently and install it well,
then you're going to get highefficiency levels from that heat
pump and that's the criticalpart.
Marc Smith (04:45):
And do they work in village halls or say it was a
large village hall, then you'regoing to get high efficiency
levels from that heat pump, andthat's the critical part.
And do they work in villagehalls or say it was a large
village hall is there alimitation of how much space a
heat pump can heat, or is it?
Just basically bringing abigger heat pump?
Phil Stricland (04:58):
No, absolutely yeah, you can put them pretty
much into any building, andvillage halls are perfect for
that.
We've done a lot ofinstallations in all types of
village halls, sports halls andall sorts of stuff like that.
But yeah, fundamentally theycome in all shapes and sizes.
You can double them up and doall sorts of stuff with them.
Whether they're air source orground source, extracting heat
from the ground.
There's lots of different waysto design and install them.
(05:21):
So yeah, very much so, I thinkthe biggest challenge Marc comes
from?
Andy Mitchell (05:25):
uh, just the primary understanding.
I think people, uh, you knowthere's layers to this, so it's
not a gas boiler, um, a gasboiler, gas as a as a fossil
fuel is an incredibly cheapenergy source.
Uh, despite looking at our gasbill, it is actually still
remarkably, it is actually stillremarkably cheap form of energy
in reality.
(05:46):
And a heat pump is a differenttech, but effectively they're
doing the same thing, which isproviding a heat load into the
property to try and match theheat requirement of that
property.
And I think the key thing isthat it is different tech, you
(06:06):
know.
So a gas boiler generally pusheswater.
You heat water up, you push itthrough some pipe work into
radiators and the radiators youremitters, and they heat the
room.
But actually the flow rates arerelatively quick and the heat
temperature of that water isrelatively high.
You'll know that.
You know you lean up againstthe radiator.
Sometimes it's like, oh, that'sa bit bit hot.
You don't get that with a heatpump.
(06:28):
The flow is slower and thetemperature that is actually
being pushed around is lower.
So therefore it'll do the samejob.
It's energy in and energy out,but it's just different and I
think people kind of just expectit to be completely different.
You know, it's a bit likegetting into an electric car and
expecting it to behave the sameas a petrol car.
It doesn't.
(06:48):
You know, there's aspects of itthat are familiar Four wheels,
windscreen, steering wheel butactually your interface with the
car is different.
You know, particularly if yougo for the most obvious one for
those who've driven is is thekind of one pedal system where
you take your foot off theaccelerator assuming the car
(07:09):
sets up this way and it actuallyslows it down because it's got
regen braking, um.
So you can end up just doingone pedal driving, um.
But people aren't familiar withthat you know, so it it's.
There's actually quite a lot ofeducation.
That's also needed, you know.
So, phil.
Phil's completely right.
You can heat pretty much anyspace with a heat pump, but it
could cost you an awful lot ofmoney.
You know to do that justbecause of the way in which they
(07:32):
they operate.
Marc Smith (07:34):
All right when you put a heat pump in, is there
anything you have to considerwith the hall If it's old, do
you say, right, well, we need toinsulate first.
We need to do this first,before we even think about
bringing it in.
Phil Stricland (07:46):
No, absolutely yeah.
So we're always.
You know well any type ofheating system.
You want to insulate first,because obviously that's going
to reduce your fuel bills.
So you always want to belooking at reducing air leakage
from a building, so that'saround your windows and doors,
things like that and insulating.
You know the fabric of thebuilding, you know the walls,
(08:09):
you know the loft insulation,things like that.
That's the first thing you wantto be looking at and then you
want to be looking at how theproperty is being used.
So if it is a village hall asopposed to a home which is used
predominantly throughout the day, typically a village hall can
be used very, very differently.
So some are used a lotthroughout the day and some
(08:34):
could be used a few times a weekand that makes a big difference
to how you could potentiallyuse the pump and the sorts of
emitters that you'd put into it,because there's no point having
, you know, underfloor heatingin a village hall that's used a
few times a week, becauseunderfloor heating is a very
slow form of heat that takes awhile to heat up, which is not
(08:56):
going to be any good if you'regoing to, you know, if you want
it on at 10 o'clock on a Tuesdayand 10 o'clock on a Friday and
it's going to take a few hoursto warm up each time, that's not
a very good way of trying toheat that space.
So you want a very quick way ofpushing heat into the room, into
the space, for the few times aweek that you're going to use it
(09:17):
in that scenario.
So you need to think aboutthose things because with
underfloor heating.
You really want to keep thespace heated throughout the week
, on all the time?
Yeah, so you know.
You need to find out fromwhoever's using the hall how
it's used throughout the time ifit's a village hall how it's
used throughout the week.
Otherwise they're going to beheating it unnecessarily when
(09:40):
they don't need to be.
So yeah there are otherconsiderations that need to be
thought about.
Marc Smith (09:45):
So when it comes, to insulation.
Obviously there's so manydifferent types.
So, say, the majority ofobviously the village halls will
be older buildings.
What are the types ofinsulation that you can actually
put in to these?
Especially, I suppose, ifthey're historic, it makes it a
bit harder as well.
You can't exactly just ripwalls down willy-nilly to put
insulation in.
(10:06):
What are the options that someof these older halls have got
when it comes to insulation?
Andy Mitchell (10:10):
Well, the key thing to remember is, when
you're applying an insulation toa property, you're changing the
physics of the building.
You're changing the way inwhich both heat and moisture
move through the building fabric, so you have got to be quite
careful.
Generally speaking, it doesvery much depend on the
(10:31):
construction.
So if you've got a cavity wallconstruction, then you could
potentially fill the cavity wall, although you've got to be
careful there, because somecavity construction is quite
poor and therefore there's a lotof foreign stuff in in the wall
that fell in when it was beingbuilt, which can cause problems
afterwards um yeah, yeah.
So so it's not a given that youcan just fill that with
(10:52):
insulation.
If you're in an area of highdriven rain, then you can cause
other problems because you canend up with moisture tracking
across.
People often think thatcavities were designed to keep
the rain out.
That's not true at all.
It was just a cheaper way ofbuilding.
I really suppose yeah, yeah yeah, no, if you go on the continent
(11:12):
, they maintain solid masonrywalls for well, they still do.
Frankly, they've changed theway in which the composition of
the block is used, but it'smonolithic.
Construction in mainland Europeis still common.
It's just if you've got acheaper block or cheaper brick
on the inside than an outsideand tie them together.
It's a cheaper way ofconstruction.
So that's the principal reasonwhy we ended up with the Cavity
(11:42):
War, which was only reallyintroduced in anger in the 20,
in the 1930s.
So so there are cavity warsbefore then, but, but not as
much.
Most masonry wars are solidbefore then and and they are
more than adequate to keep therain out, and if they're not in
a particular area, then theywere rendered.
That's why we have render onproperties.
I think we've forgotten this.
Render is as was applied tobuildings, for practical reasons
first, and not to make themlook pretty.
Um, you know, brick is porousand it stops stops the rain
(12:04):
actually tracking through thebrickwork.
Um, yeah, I learned thisrecently because I had to put in
a like a, like a waterprooferinto some mortar I was mixing up
to put on the wall, becausesome of it had basically blown
away in the wind yeah yes, soyeah, yeah, I didn't realize
that was actually yeah, I mean,in scotland, you may or may not
notice that the the render isusually more coarse, um, uh, the
(12:26):
furthest further north you go,and that's generally to reduce
the impact of the rain, which isusually driving harder, um, so
it reduces the amount of energythat's hitting the surface of
the outside of the wall.
So there's loads and loads ofpractical reasons why we built
and I think, sadly, over theyears, we've kind of forgotten
the reason why we did thesethings.
You know, um, we just think,like I say it's, you know you,
(12:49):
you look at various, you knowseaside towns.
You are, they've done it tomake it look all pretty with the
colors and it's like, nah, it'sthere for a practical reason.
Um, they've added a color in,for sure.
You know, yeah, yeah, okay, butI mean, you know the stuff had
to be on the wall, it wasn'tjust to make it look pretty.
Uh, all right, right, so soback to the insulation.
So you've either got external orinternal insulation on a solid
(13:09):
wall.
Um, if you do internal, you cancause problems.
Uh, to do with the fact you'venow cooled down the wall because
you've got insulation on theinside and therefore, if you're
not careful, moisture thattracks through the insulation
which it will, could condense onthe inside surface of the wall
something called interstitialcondensation, which can then
cause problems with the wholebuilding fabric.
So really you want to.
(13:31):
If you're internally insulating, I'd stick to products such as
diethanite, which is like a, acork and a mineral mix, or
something like wood fibre,because they're the only real
ones that seem to deal properlywith the moisture issue.
Go externally and you can startto use things like XPS, so
extruded polystyrene.
You can use wood fibre again.
That tends to be a bit moreexpensive and you're effectively
(13:53):
tea cosying the building.
The problem with that, goingback to Phil's earlier point, is
you know how often are youusing the building.
So if you tea-cozy the outsideof a village hall and you're
only using it in the eveningseach week, then you've got to
wait for the whole of theinternal what is now the
internal brickwork to completelyheat up before actually it's
going to start feeling warm.
Marc Smith (14:17):
So yeah, all right.
Yeah, insulation on the outside, so outside.
So could sorry, you have toexcuse me, could you explain
that how obviously?
I know the ticosi um metaphorbut, like how does that actually
work?
How do you put stuff on theoutside the building space,
because each building is shapeddifferently.
Do you have to purpose, make adifferent like polystyrene.
(14:37):
Is it polystyrene, or is thatokay?
Well, it can be so let'sPS isextruded polystyrene.
Andy Mitchell (14:41):
You can have wood fibre, which is they're usually
what we call semi-rigid sheets.
So if you picked them up, theydon't flop around.
And you, I mean there'smultiple methods, so the solid
sheets you would fasten back tothe structure.
That depends on what thestructure is.
So if it's timber frame, thenyou're in a whole different
(15:03):
world and arguably you probablywouldn't want to be doing that.
You'd want to approach itdifferently.
If it's timber frame, you mayfind, if you remove the cladding
, you've got voids in the studwork, in which case you could
look at installing a mineralwool.
But again, you want to becareful about moisture.
So you need to put membranesand stuff in to make sure that
the moisture can basically getout more quickly than it got in.
Um.
(15:23):
You you've got a situationwhere you've got um, if you've
got masonry building, then youcan fasten, uh, insulation to
the outside of that and then youcan either clad over the
insulation or you could renderdirectly onto the insulation.
I mean, there's a spectrum ofstuff.
I think it's a bit like ifsomebody who'd never lived in a
climate, um, like we have onthis planet, okay, uh, and they
(15:49):
were just used to walking aroundin a t-shirt and a jumper.
Okay, and you and they said toyou so so what kind of clothing
do I wear outside?
yeah, you probably wouldn't sayI would just wear one of these.
Yeah, you'd say well, itdepends on what kind of weather
is.
What do you mean?
Well, it could be, it could besunny, you know, or it could be
windy, in which case it's winter.
So, okay, you're dry, but youjust need to make sure that the
(16:10):
wind doesn't take all your heatoff your body.
So you want to wear probably athin kind of um product that
allows the moisture to get outof you, you know from.
Otherwise you'll get all superwet because you're just wearing
a plastic bag and suddenly yourealize, actually there's yeah
there's quite a complexity tothis, and it's exactly the same
with buildings well, you've,you've proved the point there of
planning you really need toplan before you do anything.
Marc Smith (16:33):
That's the best reason to plan, because there's
so many variables there are.
So, I suppose, when it comes toinsulation, all I think is
glass, wool and pir board.
But would you consider glazingindoors as an insulator?
Or because if you have tripleglaze windows, is that there to
to stop the heat escaping, or tolook pretty, or what's the?
(16:54):
No, what are they categorizedas really?
So triple, triple glazing.
Andy Mitchell (17:00):
So different terms and different things.
So if you've got a, so you'veeither got a frame and that
frame may move, so that'susually referred to as a sash.
It doesn't have to slide, itcould be on hinges, um, or it
could be a fixed window frame,so there's no moving components.
But then you've got a, a glazedsection which is either single,
double or triple.
Occasionally you can getquadruple, but I mean that's it
(17:21):
depends where you components.
But then you've got a glazedsection which is either single,
double or triple.
Occasionally you can getquadruple, but I mean it depends
where you live.
The primary benefit of movingfrom to double or to triple is
to reduce the amount of heatloss through the glazed area.
But there's a secondary benefitwhen you move to triple glazing
, which is to do with comfort.
So effectively what you'redoing is normally your double
(17:43):
glaze or triple glaze units arefilled with something called
argon, which is a slower movinggas than air.
So the heat transfer from oneglass the inner plane of glass
to the external plane of glassis slower, because the energy
just moves more.
The gas is more viscous, so theenergy transfer is slower
because the energy just movesmore the the gas is more viscous
, so the energy transfer isslower um.
So therefore your heat loss outof the the building is is is
(18:06):
reduced um.
With triple you're kind ofimproving that significantly
again um.
But the.
But the big difference reallywith triple versus double is the
inner pane of glass is muchcloser to the internal
temperature of the space.
So, as human beings, we oftenthink it's the air temperature
(18:28):
that kind of makes us feel warm.
That's partly true, but themain reason why you feel warm as
a human being is to do withsomething called radiant heat.
So if you're outside in a sunnyday and a cloud goes in front
of the sun, you go oh, it's gota bit chilly, chilly, but the
air temperature hasn't changed,it's exactly the same.
It's because, actually, thatradiant heat has been cut off.
Yeah, um, so the reason why youfeel warm, usually in a room, is
(18:50):
normally because, um, thesurface temperatures, the table,
the chair you're sat in, thewalls, um have a temperature
that's pretty close to the roomtemperature.
You feel less comfortable andmore cold when those
temperatures don't match theroom temperature, which is why,
(19:12):
when you stand close to singleglazing, you feel uncomfortable,
particularly in the winter,because actually the surface
temperature of that glass ismuch colder and you can
literally feel the heat pullingaway from your, your body.
With triple glazing, thetemperature and difference is
only about sort of three, fourdegrees and generally, as human
beings, we don't tend to noticethat.
Phil Stricland (19:32):
So those, those are the primary reasons it's
partly about heat loss partlyabout comfort all right, that's
a beautiful, beautiful segueinto a big difference between
boilers and heat pumps.
A boiler pushes very hightemperature heat into the room
via the radiators and basicallytries to heat the air, or does
(19:53):
just basically heat the air offthe radiator and just pushes the
air around the room and thenbasically overheats that air and
the radiators click off andthen it all cools down again and
then the radiators click onagain and they just go through
that cycle on and off, butthey're just basically heating
the air in the room.
And that's where you get thesevariations in temperature across
(20:14):
the room and whereas with aheat pump you're not heating the
space, the room, in the sameway.
As Andy was saying earlier.
It's a much more eventemperature, it's a lower
temperature that you're pushinginto the room over a longer
period of time.
And what you end up doing is youend up heating all the fabric
(20:35):
in the room, the walls of theroom up to the up to a
temperature of the temperatureyou've selected 21 degrees into
the room, so that over time thatall gets reflected back into
the room off those hard umbuilding fabric into the room as
well.
So you end up with everythingwithin the room becoming the
(20:55):
same temperature rather thanjust the air temperature in the
room.
So things aren't clicking onand off all the time.
Everything becomes 21 degrees,so it becomes much more
comfortable and the occupants inthe room become much more
comfortable within that room aswell.
So it doesn't really matterwhether it's under floor or
radiators.
With a with a heat pump,everything just becomes very,
(21:17):
very calm.
And and the efficiency from theheat pump comes from that as
well, in the fact that you'reyou're just slowly um pushing
that heat into the room at amuch lower temperature, rather
than pushing a high temperatureinto the room like a boiler,
you're just trickling heat intothat room, which is where the
efficiency comes from, and thatheat is then getting slowly
(21:40):
radiated back into the room fromall that, from the walls and
the hard fixtures in the room,and that that is just much more
comfortable as a as human beings, and you can generally have the
room a little bit cooler, set alittle bit cooler than you
would with a boiler as well,because it's more comfortable.
It feels more comfortable tothe occupants as well.
Marc Smith (22:01):
And are heat pumps obviously more energy efficient?
Are they reasonable to run aswell like cost-wise?
Phil Stricland (22:08):
Yeah, yeah.
So again, as long as you've gota reasonably you know well
insulated property, um, so youknow, if it's very, very leaky,
you know so you've got singleglazed windows, poor insulation
and gaps around your doors, thena heat pump's going to struggle
so it's not that it won't do it.
(22:29):
You could put a heat pump intoany property, but at the bottom
end of that scale you knowyou're going to be, the heat
pump's going to have to workpretty hard, and that's when a
heat pump becomes less efficient.
So as long as you're.
As long as you've got a propertyyou know um older properties
you want to start insulating,first getting rid of your air
leakage, and then you startgetting the heat pump into its
(22:52):
optimum efficiency window, whereyou can start dropping the flow
temperatures through yourradiators, underfloor heating,
whatever and then you startgetting the efficiencies up.
That's when the the costs startdropping right.
Marc Smith (23:07):
Are there tests to do so?
If you went into village hall,would you do a certain number of
tests to say, look, this iswhat's what type, what you need
to do before you put the heatbump in, or what would you?
I mean we, certainly do.
Phil Stricland (23:19):
I mean we do a site visit and we'd look, look
around at um and you can I meannot a test, but you can quite
quickly see um, you know whatsort of insulation the property
has, what sort of glazing theproperty has.
We certainly love the villagehall but you know, in properties
generally we'd look at the loftinsulation measure that, see
how much insulation is up thereand advise them on.
(23:43):
You know what sort of level ofefficiency we'd kind of expect
from that kind of property andwhat sort of costs they're
likely to see from that.
We'd do some expect from thatkind of property and what sort
of uh cost they're likely to seefrom that.
We'd do some calculations onthat.
Yes, um, because becauseessentially you know if they're
switching from a traditionalboiler to to a heat pump, you
know they're going to want tosee what sort of efficiencies
(24:05):
and what sort of running costthey're going to get from that.
Marc Smith (24:09):
Yeah, I've got a couple of topics.
I want to discuss the first one.
I was unsure if it was going tobe worth talking about, if it
was relevant for village halls,but it's heat recovery.
So well, number one what isheat recovery?
Uh.
And number two do the work invillage halls and does the
village hall?
Would it have to be a brand newpassive hall before you put it
(24:36):
in?
Phil Stricland (24:37):
Okay, so what is it?
So?
Heat recovery is a ventilationsystem which enables you to
extract the stale air from aproperty from building to the
outside, bringing fresh air, andrecover the lost heat from the
outgoing air to the incoming air.
(24:58):
So it's a very efficient way ofventilating property and making
it the air very comfortable andbalanced within a property.
So typically you'd install thatinto a new build, especially
when the when the air leakagewithin that build is kept
(25:22):
relatively low yeah let's put itand certainly when you're
getting up toward what we callpassive health standard, which
is a very airtight, very wellinsulated property, then you
would definitely need some formof mechanical ventilation system
that we're talking about.
But yeah, it's very you know,we would normally recommend it
in a well-built, new-buildproperty, right, because it's a
(25:47):
very efficient way ofventilating the property and it
does mean that you don't needtrickle vents in your windows.
Marc Smith (25:54):
Oh really.
Phil Stricland (25:56):
Which are a poor way of ventilating a
property.
And you don't need extractorfans in your bathrooms or
kitchen Because it replaces allof that.
Because when you're building aproperty, you're basically, you
know you're insulating it verywell, you're getting rid of all
the, because you're building aproperty, a new build, you're
(26:17):
getting rid of all the airleakage hopefully.
So you're building a nice, youknow envelope, you're insulating
it well, and then, from abuilding perspective, you need
to ventilate that property.
So building regulationsbasically then say so, you need
to ventilate this, so we'regoing to bash holes in it, so
(26:39):
we're going to drill holes in itand we're going to put
ventilation extractor fans inthe bathrooms and kitchen and
we're going to insist that youput these little vents above all
the windows which you need tohave open all the time.
You put these little ventsabove all the windows which you
need to have open all the time,which means that when it's windy
, outdoor air whatevertemperature it is in the middle
of winter could be minus three,minus five is going to blow into
(27:04):
your bedrooms and living spacesand cool the house down, and
that's your ventilation.
And you need ventilation,otherwise you'll get damp and
the air will be stale and you'llget all sorts of problems.
So you need the ventilation,but that's how building
regulations say you shouldachieve it, which is a poor way
of ventilating a property, butthat's one way of achieving it.
(27:26):
That's a cheap way of achievingit, but it is by far the best
way of achieving it all righthaving a ventilation system, a
mechanical ventilation system,which is basically two fans, one
in, one out, is a very, veryefficient, relatively cheap way
of doing it and running thosefans.
(27:47):
Um, there's a small cost indoing that.
Yeah, it's completely offset bythe gains you'll get from not
having that cold air coming intoyour house and the savings
you'll get from the uh, from thefact that you don't need to
reheat that that cold air that'scoming into your house, yeah,
yeah, and you can put that inany property with a, with a
(28:08):
small cabin.
Andy Mitchell (28:09):
Yeah, there's a small limit to that.
So, so you measure your house,um, in terms of air leakage and
there's various targets.
So building regs is five meters, cubed meters, squares of fifth
pascals, don't worry about that.
Um, uh, generally anythingbelow three is where your heat
recovery makes sense.
Um, above three, and actuallyyour building's going to be so
leaky that the energy that yourecover is kind of basically
(28:33):
going to be working against theleakiness of the building.
So the heat energy you recoverwill be kind of lost because of
the leakiness of the building.
So there is a sweet spot,although the other benefit is,
as Phil's described, becauseit's ducted.
Ok, so you're bringing, you'retaking out stale air from wet
rooms and you're bringing infresh air into cold rooms with
(28:53):
the heat recovery part.
In the middle there's alsofilters in the unit, so you will
.
As a result, if you're a hayfever sufferer, then you usually
have a marked increase inimproved health in terms of hay
fever suffering and, equally,there is plenty of evidence now
(29:16):
around improved eczema andimproved asthma for those who
suffer with that condition.
Because of the quality of theair that ends up in the property
.
You're effectively shiftingaway from uncontrolled
ventilation to controlledventilation and when you do that
, you benefit from cleaner air,which is often sort of
(29:37):
overlooked sometimes because youthink it's all about energy.
Phil Stricland (29:39):
And again, it's not just about energy, it's
also about air, and there's alsoa benefit in cities as well,
where the air quality is not sogood.
Yeah, yeah, really good pointand the other thing it does it
also controls the humidity inthe property as well.
So the humidity in propertiesin an uncontrolled ventilated
(30:02):
property is completelyuncontrolled.
You've got the extractor fansbut they're just basically
sucking out the air from yourbathrooms and kitchen Humidity
in the property as a whole iscompletely uncontrolled, whereas
in a property with a kind ofventilation system you can
control that quite well some ofthem very well and a property
(30:27):
that's controlled there, with asystem like that, property
that's controlled there, with asystem in like that, the
humidity can be controlledpretty accurately and is much
more comfortable for theoccupants.
Marc Smith (30:40):
Yeah that's amazing.
Phil Stricland (30:43):
Yeah, so often you'll find that when you're
showering in the bathroom, themirrors, the windows practically
don't steam up at all do theyreally all?
right, so easy because thehumidity is kept, you know,
pretty low all the time.
Yeah, so there are quite a lotof benefits to it, yeah, but, as
I said, you know, you askedabout village halls, but yes,
you can put them in villagehalls as well.
(31:04):
Um, so if you've got, uh, youknow, we we put one into a
village hall that was used forsports, so they had showers and
stuff there for the sportsfacilities, which was a new
build property.
(31:25):
So, yeah, there was benefitsfrom because they were used
quite a lot for the sportsshowering.
Marc Smith (31:30):
Yeah, very interesting that.
So basically don't do what Idid and put spray foam into the
window vent to stop the raincoming in.
Phil Stricland (31:37):
No.
Andy Mitchell (31:38):
Otherwise you'll Absolutely not.
Marc Smith (31:41):
So yeah, the last topic I'd like to discuss is, I
suppose, electric vehiclechargers.
I suppose obviously the worldis going that way with cars and
I think a good thing for villagehalls to do is to actually have
charging stations on theirvillage hall.
Because you say, if you come towhere I am, there's probably
(32:02):
about I don't know, maybe fivecharging points in the whole of
the isla sky.
And so I know my partner'sfather drives over from holland
in his electric car and he'salways like where do I charge up
?
And everything's like a stress.
So all these little ruralcommunities could really benefit
from having electric carchargers on their on their
building.
But how easy is it to do that?
Because obviously they theytake a lot of energy and and
(32:26):
they might cost a lot to put in.
So what's the process of ofgetting started with ev chargers
for village halls?
Phil Stricland (32:34):
yes, so, um.
So yeah, 21 degrees.
We do install um electric carchargers and they can be
installed pretty much on anyproperty um or even standalone
um.
But yeah, I mean they'rerelatively easy to install.
Um there is that they obviouslyneed power.
So we need to look at the poweravailability on the property.
(32:57):
So if you are remote, you knowthat can be a limitation.
But in most cases that can bedealt with by talking to the
electricity supplier.
But it depends what you look.
I mean, if you're looking toput in a bank of them, you know
(33:17):
that becomes more of a challenge.
For a village hall, you know,typically you'd only require,
you know one or maybe two, sothat's normally not a problem.
And on a domestic property,that's, you know, you normally
only put.
Look at putting one on, sothat's not an issue at all.
On a village hall, you mightalso be looking at how you would
(33:39):
possibly recover some cost onthat, so you might.
Marc Smith (33:45):
You might be looking at some payment system around
that and there are charges whichdo that as built in so you
don't have to find an externalsupplier, you can just if it's
built in there, you don't haveto there are charges that have
systems as part of that, orthere's various apps and that
(34:06):
you can also sign up to that.
Phil Stricland (34:08):
Do that separately as well.
So there are solutions aroundthat that aren't too costly um,
that can be combined with thatas well.
Marc Smith (34:21):
Um so yeah, it's not , it's not too, and there are
grants as well.
Phil Stricland (34:23):
Excellent, yeah , yep.
So there are grants forcommercial um.
There were more grants, butthey've scaled them back a bit.
But there are still grantsavailable for commercial
situations and for people inflats and also for people who
don't have driveways.
(34:44):
So if you're parking on theroad and you need to get a cable
across a pavement, so there arevarious solutions out there
where you um, with permissionfrom the council, you can
actually drop a, a kind of flapacross the pavement which you
can lift the flap up oh really,the cable in the flat back down
(35:05):
uh, it does need.
Does need council permission toactually get that installed, but
you can get a grant towardsthat as well, assuming that you
can actually get your car on theroad outside your house because
they don't have control overwho's parking outside your
particular house.
But yeah, so there are grantsthat help towards that as well.
Marc Smith (35:29):
Excellent, and can you so obviously you'll also do
solar.
I was going to say thatobviously links towards that as
well.
Excellent, and can you, soobviously you'll also do solar I
was going to tell you thatobviously links into soda as
well, because yeah, so on theroof, can you charge a car
directly from solar, or does itneed to go into a battery bank
first so you can?
I'm not unsure if it's like a,if you need regular voltage and
if solar panels can give youthat steady supply, or does it
need to go into a huge batterybank before it?
Phil Stricland (35:51):
goes to the car , yeah, it does not need to go
straight into it.
It doesn't need to go in abattery bank.
So you can team it up withsolar and or a battery.
You can do either, or Right.
If you don't have a battery,then it just depends whether the
sun is shining or not, whetheryou have enough solar to charge
(36:12):
the car.
So there's a limit on howquickly it will charge the car.
If there's not enough solar,then it will take whatever it
comes from the solar and top itup from the grid to charge the
car right right, so it'sautomatic.
You don't need to do anything.
So the ev charger will dealwith all that for you.
So that's not an issue and itdepends how big your pv array is
(36:36):
.
So if you've got a large roof,um, you know you, you could have
a large pv array on the if it'sa village hall, for example,
you could have a large pv array.
On the village hall, for example, you could have a large pv
around the roof.
So you know, if it was anovercast day you might get half
of it off the roof and half ofit off the grid.
Charging the car right and then, or a cloud could go across and
when the cloud had disappearedthen it would all be coming off
(36:59):
the off the roof again.
Yeah, we don't get clouds inscotland.
You don't get clouds, that'slovely, it's sunny all year.
But if you had a, battery, asyou said, then obviously that
gives you more flexibility.
Yeah, the battery could then becharged from the solar um and
you could keep the batterytopped up, and if someone came
and came along to charge theircar, then it would obviously
(37:21):
charge from the battery firstand then, when the battery was
discharged, it would then takeit from the PV.
Marc Smith (37:30):
Oh, that's very smart and it all does that
automatically, automatically,yeah.
Phil Stricland (37:34):
Then you wouldn't need to do anything.
It would all be automatic.
So it would be set up to be.
Marc Smith (37:38):
That's amazing.
So are solar panels asefficient?
Sorry are they.
Can they absorb um energy whenthe clouds are there?
Is it just reduced or?
Is it completely zero.
Andy Mitchell (37:51):
No, no, I think people think it's always to do
with, you know, direct sunlightand all the rest of it.
I thought that, yeah, there'soptimal times and obviously you
get a lot more energy when it isuh, when it is a clear day, but
, um, no, uh, you, you get umvarying rates, but you, you
still get it.
And there's, there's somepanels actually, which um will
pick up um, uh, solar, uh energy, even on the reverse, assuming
(38:15):
that you space them correctlyand stuff.
So, um, oh, very cool thetechnology is developing all the
time, uh, but they do do runhand in hand very much with the
battery for sure, as Phil's beenexplaining.
Marc Smith (38:25):
Yeah.
Phil Stricland (38:27):
And actually the most optimum is not the
height of the summer, because asthey get hotter they lose
efficiency slightly.
So you want a nice, bright,sunny, cold day.
It's the optimum day.
Marc Smith (38:39):
Yeah, that would be the opposite of what I would do.
Yeah, it's the optimum day.
Phil Stricland (38:41):
Yeah that would be the opposite of what I would
have thought.
Marc Smith (38:43):
Yeah, it's interesting, cold and bright.
Phil Stricland (38:47):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's true yes, any sunlight
helps, but the brighter it is,the better.
Marc Smith (38:53):
Excellent, so 21 degrees.
So where about in the country,do you cover?
Andy Mitchell (39:04):
Well, it really depends on the solutions that
you're looking for.
So, in terms of performance,windows and doors, that's
national.
The same with mechanicalventilation, heat recovery,
that's also national.
That's in terms of design andsupply with windows, we
installed too.
If it's the renewabletechnology, so that's heat pumps
(39:25):
, batteries, voltage, solar andev charges, then we're more
geographically based,predominantly in england rather
than the whole of the uk, but wealso in those instances we also
install.
So it's the whole packagetogether in that case, and we're
constantly growing anddeveloping all the time.
So actually we are looking atdeveloping into Scotland fairly
(39:47):
soon.
Marc Smith (39:49):
So can you do.
At present do you kind ofremote site visits if it's a bit
out of the way, if you've gotanyone in that area, if someone
was asking about their villagehall At the moment we're a bit
limited with that.
Andy Mitchell (40:02):
It really depends on the technology that you're
looking for.
So certainly with things likePVs and heat pumps we would
struggle.
We don't cover those areas.
So, for example, at the momentwe don't actually cover the
northwest of England.
So that's outside our limit.
(40:22):
But we do, um, we do do somework with the ventilation uh
systems and we do do some workwith the uh the performance, uh,
the windows and doors that'sgreat.
Marc Smith (40:33):
So what I will do, though, for everyone, I will put
a link to your website onto thepodcast page so anyone that is
looking for um energy efficiency, uh help can go on there and
see what you guys do, becauseI've been on the website a few
times now before our um podcast.
It is, it's a lovely website.
It looks really nice actually,uh, but it's actually filled
with information as well.
(40:54):
Uh, it's a brilliant websiteactually.
I can see the effort that'sgone into that, uh, so, yeah,
well, thank you very much, uh,for your time.
Uh, today.
Phil and andy is really, reallyappreciated.
I've probably got twice as manyquestions still in my head, um,
but yeah, it's well.
Thank you so much for coming on.
It's been a real pleasure tospeak with you thanks very much
(41:15):
thank you very much no problem.
Many thanks to our headlinesponsor and specialist village
hall insurance provider, AlliedAllied Westminster, the home of
Village Guard, for making thispodcast possible, and to online
booking system provider,Hallmaster, who also sponsor our
podcast and can be found atHallmaster.
co.
(41:35):
uk.
You've been listening to theVillage Halls podcast, a unique
listening community forBritain's village community and
church halls and anyoneinterested in the vital services
they provide.
Don't forget entries for theVillage Halls Inspiration Awards
2025 are open now until the30th of September, so visit our
website to find out more and getinvolved.
(41:57):
We will be back again soon withanother episode.
For more information, visitthevillagehallspodcast.
com, where you'll also findlinks to our social media pages.
Thanks again for listening inand until next time.
Goodbye for now.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.