Heating

In the 1970s when I took up the organ, churches were not always cold places in the winter. In fact, when the organ tuner was due to work in a church they would send a postcard to ask that the church be heated to the normal Sunday temperature. This was never a problem for the second place I played at because the heating was on all the time.

Nevertheless, organists are able to function in some low temperatures. The 'person in the pew' may like to think that a church should be as warm as their lounge and that they should not have any discomfort: this is impossible. Church heating should be sufficient to take the edge off the cold. It has been very cold in the 2021-2022 winter or I am just getting old.

There are various forms of heating: hot pipes and/or radiators seem less popular but I may just be imagining that. Many places I go into have electric radiant heating or elements (like an electric fire) suspended from the ceiling. One church I was at in the 1980s had huge gas radiant heaters installed and the humidity they produced (or failed to eliminate perhaps) played havoc with the organ. Another church installed modern radiators and placed one underneath the organ: they had to install a new organ a few years later as they had baked the old one. I told them at the time but nobody listened.

Recently I have been to a church where the heating had been put on far too late (because somebody forgot to go and do it (there being no timer) so I was frozen to the marrow. Another time (same place) there was air in the system to the boiler cut out.

Church - a temperature lottery!