Green practices have always saved money

Your Green Month (www.caterersearch.com/green) has reminded me of a couple of things I did in the past to save energy. To be fair, as each was in pre-green days, they were more in an effort to save money than anything else.

The first was as long ago as 1982 when I replaced all the wall lights on the corridors of my hotel with 2D low-energy lamps. We replaced 20 wall lights, each with two 60W bulbs, with lamps of 20W. We saved 100W per lamp or 2kW in all. It was costing 5p a kWh in those days, so we saved 10p an hour or £2.40 a day, £860 a year. As the investment was £750 it paid for itself within the year.

The second was at a small townhouse hotel I built in which I gave the central heating system a tweak. Each room had its own flow and return from a main in the corridor. There was a motorised valve on the flow of each control from reception so we could heat each room only if it was let. Second, each room had a thermostatic valve on the radiator and a secondary thermostat on the wall set at a higher temperature. This latter thermostat would also close the motorised valve when the pre-set temperature was reached. With the two thermostats we could keep the room temperature between a suitable high and low. The one thing I missed out on was the slot on the wall inside the room for the key to switch off all the electrics when the customer left the room.

Hot water was from a direct-fired tank with an efficiency quotient of about 90%.

For a 25-bedroom hotel, the total gas bill was £1,800 a year including all heating and cooking.

Christopher Dale
Claymore Training, Kidderminster

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