Keeping records#
The programme is designed to result in a profile of the building, how it is used, and future aspirations in a way that should help when writing grant proposals and agreeing briefs with heating consultants, architects, and grant funders. The record can gather any useful data about the building in one place - photographs, architectural and heating system diagrams, documents detailing past work to reduce heat loss - as well as any questions arising from investigations of the heating and ventilation and the results of the group’s planning and community engagement exercise.
Where groups are comfortable enough with the technology, the easiest way is through cloud storage, for instance, using Google Drive. The facilitator could sign up for a new Gmail address and using the space that comes with that. It’s possible to share files on Drive with people by entering their email addresses. Any email address will work, but the person will need to create a Google account and associate the address with the account. It’s also possible to allow anyone with a hidden link to view the files. If the files aren’t the least bit sensitive, they could be made public instead. Because it’s easy to accidentally share files more openly than you intend, you should not put files with sensitive or personal details in this kind of shared filespace, especially without permission.
There are alternatives to Google Drive, such as Dropbox or Microsoft 365 Online - it’s a matter of what the group finds useful. Whatever you use, it’s useful if you can share it with us so we can see it, too.
Where groups aren’t confident or happy to work in this way, you will want to find other ways to document what you can. If you think your group could use cloud storage but need us to set it up for you, please contact our administrator.
Thermal monitoring data — temperature and relative humidity measurements from the monitor that we send you — is a special case because we have specific methods for collecting it. We describe how this works in the thermal monitoring section.