If you’ve made changes to your home to save energy or reduce your environmental impact, your experiences can help others and we want to hear from you!
Draught proofing, secondary glazing, water management, heat pumps - the impact of a few changes, small or large, can become hundreds, that lead to thousands, ultimately millions of homes drastically reducing our energy consumption.
Hearing what motivated you, the impact of the changes or what you wished you had done differently, is often enough to help people take the next step.
Get involved here
Everyone - whether we own, rent or share - can take action in our homes to reduce our reliance on fossil fuelled energy and help drive the change we urgently need to tackle the climate emergency.
It starts with a conversation. Between neighbours, friends or strangers – sharing knowledge that helps others take the next step and start saving money on energy bills, living in a healthier space and taking action toward reaching our zero-carbon future.
We’re going to start as many of these conversations as we can over the weekend of 16-17 May 2020!
So if you’ve got something to show in your home, or knowledge you can share, get involved by opening your home for Bristol Green Doors weekend!
What’s actually involved in opening your home?
Before
- Our team visit you to collect information for your home’s case study: What measures have you installed? What motivated you to do it? Who did you use for the work? How has it changed your home and life there?
- We add your case study to the event map.
- Your case study is listed on our website to help others see what you’ve done. Take a look at previous case studies.
- You’ll attend an event and meet all the other openers and volunteers. We’ll brief you on what to expect, answer any questions and provide you with all the materials you’ll need over the weekend, including copies of your case study.
During
- You can choose to open your home for both days or just one over the weekend of 16-17 May 2020, between 1-5pm.
- You’ll have volunteer event stewards to help you set up, manage visitors and signpost them to more information. Some homes receive up to 50 visitors per day, but with volunteer stewards this is manageable.
- Your job is simply to tell your story: why you did it, what worked for you and lessons you learned. You’re not required to be a fountain of all knowledge, people are there to hear your experience.
Beyond
- Celebrate the end of a fantastic weekend at a thank you evening with the rest of the openers and volunteers.
- Keep having conversations and normalising what you’ve done.
- Your case study will stay available on our website to help others (we anonymise your information after the event unless you agree otherwise).
To date over 100 people have opened their homes for Bristol Green Doors. Some people have opened six or seven times! Why do they do it? Here are some of their comments about the weekend.
- “Great event, very positive vibe from all attending”
- “Our home is no show home but people who visit are genuinely interested in what you've done for making it more environmentally sound and that makes me feel proud”
- “Lovely to talk to like minded people and encourage others to go for it”
- "I had lots of interesting conversations with knowledgeable and interested people and I enjoyed helping people on their way to greening their homes"
- “I enjoy talking to people and showing what I've done”
