Making Bath Abbey more sustainable

Home News & Events Latest News Making Bath Abbey more sustainable

Local engineering consultancy Buro Happold have been working with Bath Abbey to try to make the Abbey more sustainable. The most important aspect of the project is to use hot water from the Roman Bath’s next door to provide underfloor heating to the Abbey. To date they have installed underfloor heating under flag stones on the north side of the Abbey to test the concept. If all goes well the plan is to heat the whole Abbey using hot thermal spring water from the Roman Baths. This is a great and relatively rare opportunity to make use of this renewable resource to make the Abbey more comfortable for staff and visitors. The work has considerable technical challenges as there is little precedent for this project – a detailed explanation of this is provided in these slides from a presentation Buro Happold gave recently in Bath.

Other energy saving measures under consideration include:

  • Wall and roof insulation
  • Possible double glazing
  • LED lighting throughout
  • Possible solar panels

We wish the Abbey good luck with this project and hope it comes to fruition.