As anyone, who attended church during January or visited the café, will tell you, we had a problem with the heating. The church building usually so cozy even in the coldest of weather was freezing.
The company who installed our ground breaking, new, eco friendly system were called back to find out why it was simply not working. After hours of painstaking effort, it was discovered that there was a leak in the underfloor pipes that took the heated water throughout the building. Fortunately they were able to isolate the sector that the leak was in. Perhaps it had been caused by a nail being knocked into the pipe by accident in laying the floor.
Having discovered the appropriate location of the fault, how could the exact fault be determined without lifting the floor of the whole section? (in this case, the Auchtergaven room) Then Iain had a shaft of inspiration – thermal imaging cameras could tell exactly where heat is underground and they could pinpoint the exact place of the leak.
But how can you get hold of a thermal imaging camera? Well the Fire Service have them… So we contacted the Fire Service but the cameras can never, unless under extreme circumstances, be taken out of the fire engine. The station duty manager was, however, someone who trained under Andy Smith when he was in the Fire Service. Because he knew Andy, he authorised the camera to be brought to Bankfoot and used for the test!
The fault was thus located exactly – and all that was required to fix it was to dig up a small hole in the floor of a cupboard! Not only was this an easy thing to do, it saved us many hundreds of pounds! And of course the church is back to its usual comfortable heat!
Thanks to all – and thanks be to God!
Bankfoot Church Centre 