Small Steps – Our Contribution to Sustainability
19 Dec 2023Sustainability is featuring more and more in all our lives these days and here at King Street Apartment we’re trying to do our bit.
Created within a roof-space, the apartment has characterful sloping ceilings. But those ceilings had no insulation whatsoever when the property was originally built in about 1890. When we bought the apartment it had electric night-storage heaters which generated and stored heat during the night and released it steadily over the following day. The problem was that much of that expensive heat was escaping straight through the uninsulated roof to warm the sky over Inverness rather than keeping our guests warm. Also, given the fickleness of the Highland weather, guests would turn the heating up on a cold day only to find themselves uncomfortably hot if the following day was warm and sunny as the heaters were still giving out heat.
So, we’ve insulated the sloping ceilings and also replaced the storage heaters with a high-efficiency gas central-heating system which is fully controllable by guests. This has cut our heating costs, reduced emissions, and enabled guests to enjoy a comfortable temperature of their choosing. These measures also boosted our EPC rating from E to C. With national strategies now turning to phasing out gas for domestic heating, we’ll need to consider further changes down the line.
We use local tradesman and contractors for repairs and safety certification as this helps to sustain the local economy rather than boosting the profits of national firms based outwith the area. In a similar vein, our current focus is on stocking our welcome basket with some of the locally sourced products at which The Highlands excels, rather than ubiquitous factory produced fare.
Guests are provided with organic soaps produced by The Highland Soap Company in Fort William and we refill the washing-up liquid bottles rather than discarding them. On the subject of rubbish, we’re also enabling guests to bin glass, recycleable waste and general waste separately.
Small steps, we know, but we do like to take them!