Eco Renovation Open Homes coming 12th and 13th

Last year 'Eco Renovation Open Homes' launched in Randwick Village Hall with 12 homes - this year it will be the weekend, September 12th and 13th 2009. We are launching in the newly eco-renovated 'The Exchange' in Brick Row, Stroud, where you can see the Eco-Installers Fair and see the eco-renovations - this year we also have an amazing 22 homes to look around (including two in Randwick) showing internal and external insulation, wood pellet boilers, air source heat pumps, gas condensing boilers, rainwater harvesting and more, and we have a range of homes from new build to listed.

Photos: Helen Royall handing out leaflets in Stroud last Saturday - I was delighted that so many people we spoke to were very keen to come along to this event. We may well be out again with leaflets as local press haven't yet given us as much press coverage as I would have hoped!

Stroud District Council has again organised a walk for the Saturday and this year we have a mini bus safari to get you to a selection of the homes on both Saturday and Sunday (tickets from Tourist Information). If you want to make a day of it, several of the homes are providing drinks and a place you can rest and eat your picnic and on Saturday food will be available from the Exchange, provided by Nightingale's Cafe. On Sunday pizzas will be available at lunch time and cream teas in the afternoon at Springhill Co-Housing.

The Randwick Runner kindly circulated the Open Homes leaflet but if you haven't seen one of our leaflets in town then you can see all the details at: http://www.stroudopenhomes.org.uk/

This year we are excited to announce that local company Ecotricity are supporting Transition Stroud - they have paid for the Open Homes leaflet this year and for every customer who swaps to them to buy their electricity they will give Transition Stroud £25 to develop more projects to cut the carbon locally.

All you need is to phone them on 08000 302302 and quote ‘Transition Stroud’. Ecotricity are the only company to spend 100% on building new sources of green energy - literally turning our electricity bills into windmills. I have personally been on a green tariff with a big company and have meant to change to a proper green tariff like Ecotricity for a long time - this affinity offer we've set up is hopefully the final push to help people make the change.

Lastly a big thank you to all who have supported putting on this event again, including particularly wonderful support from Stroud District Council, Stroud Town Council, Heritage Open Days and Ecotricity, but particularly all the homeowners who are so kindly opening their homes to the public.