Heating

One of the most important challenges facing churches today is providing sufficient comfort for the many different users of the building, from worshippers to staff to visitors. Achieving this whilst cutting our greenhouse gas emissions and conserving historic interiors creates specific technical challenges for church buildings.


A church’s heating system affects its fabric, its contents, its congregation and its mission. Heating makes up the vast majority (over 80%) of its energy use and carbon footprint. Heating costs money to run, maintain and replace. 
 

There is no universal solution to making a church comfortable and the key to arriving at a solution that provides reasonable comfort at a reasonable cost and reasonable environmental impact is to devote sufficient time and effort to understanding the particular needs of your own church.

Pew Heating St Andrew's Chedworth

  

About our guidance

 

We are in the course of updating our church heating guidance. We have divided our guidance into a suite of short stand-alone sections. Pick out the section you need, or read all of them from start to finish. We will add more sections as they are ready.

 

 

1. Heating principles
2. Heating perspectives
3. Heating approaches
4. Decarbonising and the future of heat
5. Heating checklist
6. Heating pitfalls
7. Options appraisals, and getting advice
8. Heating Permission and Regulations
9. Heating Costs and Funding
10. Temporary Heating Options

  

Download our guidance

Case Studies

 

 

Heat Pumps
Biomass
Alternative Electric Heating Solutions
Further Case Studies

  

Other resources

 

 

Send us your feedback


Heating is a complex and rapidly changing topic, so we are very interested in your feedback on our new guidance. 

If you spot anything that needs fixing or isn’t clear, please contact us.