It isn’t all about butterflies. There is also a district heating system to run.
This month was marked by the news that our long standing and highly regarded district heating consultant Nick Douch and his wife Lou, both members of the Co-op, are taking retirement. They will be much missed and we wish them well. They have sold the business to Nexus Heat who Douch Biomass just pipped at the post for the original installation job. Just at this moment the larger boiler decides to develop some sort of fault, overheats and keeps shutting itself down but Nexus think they have worked out the cause. The oil boilers always kick in at this point and take over but obviously this is not the aim and not what we want.
Meanwhile, while on holiday in France, I had some very bad moments when an email arrived from an organisation called Woodsure who have recently been introduced by OFGEM or somebody to monitor wood chip quality. We have to pay a registration fee of hundreds of pounds and send them a sample each year. Due to a bit of a misunderstanding with the covering form which was sent with the sample, we told them the chip was G30 quality when actually it was the larger G50, which we are allowed to burn in our boilers. So the email I got on holiday was saying they had rejected the sample and they were de-registering us in 7 days unless we responded. This is not good as no certification by Woodsure = no Renewable Heat Incentive.
Long story short, we have sent them back their/our actual registration certificate to demonstrate that we are registered for G30 and G50. But it was a nasty moment.
On the plus side the butterfly season is in full swing. On 18 July Tom reported 347 butterflies in Park Copse. 3 Brown argus was the best yet with 1 female, so they are breeding not just passing through.
Tom has taken some Co-op members around for a butterfly walk and on Tuesday Tom and I accompanied some residents and staff from Care Ashore on a butterfly walk and we heard later they really enjoyed it. They certainly look pretty happy in the photo. We were on site for about 2 hours and saw many species of butterfly, particularly Gatekeepers, and the grass and paths were seething with all sorts of insects, but no Wood White butterflies. That is until 2 minutes after our guests had left when I spotted the first Wood White of the second brood. How unlucky was that they missed it?