Installed Measures:
Personal story
We have always been interested in trying to make positive changes to our lifestyle to achieve a balance of lower household bills alongside reducing our environmental impact, but alongside that we love old homes and want to live in a comfortable house. Having dabbled with PV’s and a wood burning stove in our last house (a small terraced house) we planned our house move to ensure that we had enough money set aside to carry out the kind of work we wanted to. We wanted to ensure that what we did was sensible, played to our strengths and included elements that we were interested in and enjoy. This led to a combination of insulation and good quality windows alongside PV’s and a wood burning boiler stove. We looked at solar thermal but on discovering the Immersun diverter we were able to maximise our solar array and still end up with free hot water from March to September. Since our initial work, last year we replaced our wood burning boiler stove with a standard stove, and installed an Air Source Heat Pump – alongside this we have a Mixergy smart hot water tank. Finally, due to the extra electricity use with the ASHP we have joined Ripple enabling us to directly match our household energy use with a share of a large wind turbine.
Property Background
The house is a 1927 4 bed (it was a 3 bed when we bought it) detached solid walled property. When we bought it in Oct 2012 it had single glazing, open fire places but lots of lovely original features. It did have decent levels of loft insulation and a good gas condensing boiler. The work to the house was a combination of modernising it (keeping original features as much as possible), sorting out various issues (e.g. the garage roof needed serious attention) and plugging the gaps (the small roof at the rear of the house didn’t have insulation). Following this came the energy saving interventions. When we tackled the garage roof (which was a flat roof, on multiple levels with various different materials) we ran a pitched roof all the way along the side of the house and installed lots of insulation in the new roof and internally along the external walls creating a further insulated barrier between the house and the outside. We have recently completed a loft conversion.
Benefits of work carried out
The results are dramatic – when we first moved in (Oct 2012) keeping warm of an evening was incredibly difficult. We had the heating on as much as we could afford to, and we were still sitting under a duvet as well as being fully clothed in winter clothing. A couple of times we tried lighting fires in the open fire place but that made negligible difference, it was obvious that most of the benefit was going up the chimney. At the end of the winter we were presented with bills adding up to around £800-900 for a 6 month period which included approximately 9000kWh gas. So the result was an uncomfortable and expensive winter. The following winter (with most of the interventions, but pre-ASHP) was much more comfortable and much cheaper. Our house performance from 31/05/13 to 1/6/14 saw us using 2882 kWh (258.336 units) gas, and 1355 kWh electricity. We generated about 2500 kWh electricity over the same period. The Immersun/PV/Hot Water combination is autonomous over summer and results in virtually no cost over spring, summer and early autumn and with our Mixergy tank we can keep track of exactly how much hot water we have, and how much is being used (the kids hate that we can see when they spend too long in the shower!). In August 2022 we installed the Air Source Heat Pump, and removed the gas supply to the property. From the beginning of September to the end of February 2023 our electricity usage has been 1979kWh with our expected annual usage approximately 3000kWh. We have also increased the size of the house with a loft conversion.
Favourite feature
It is hard to pick one, as many of the decisions taken are based on it all working together.
Immersun – a great way of using electricity generated at source and a great alternative to solar thermal if you can’t afford both (it isn’t as efficient as solar thermal so it is a second best approach).
Mixergy Smart hot water tank – you can see exactly what is going on and maximise the use of solar generation. Also, because of the way the tank stratifies the heat in the tank it enables more effective use of the solar input which means we are able to cover our hot water needs for a larger portion of the year.
Good quality windows and bi-folds – these are great – they look fantastic and are good at keeping the heat in, properly installed they also eliminate drafts and being timber they should last way longer than UPVC (the original windows had managed to last 86 years, 1 word of warning – there was one window that had been replaced with a cheap timber DG window, it can only have been in for 8-10 years and was already rotting). These will need upkeep but it will be interesting to see how they do in the future.
Full details of measures installed
Timber triple glazing – Argon filled triple glazing with U(window) value of 1.1. Installed by Russell Timbertech, the windows are lovely, but we would not recommend the company.
Solid wall insulation – 60mm phenolic to get U-value of walls to building regs (0.3). Installed by SERS, they were a professional company who communicated well and did a great job.
Underfloor insulation – 15-20cm Sheeps wool insulation. DIY job.
3.04kW Solar PV with linked Immersun heating water in a heat store – this device diverts any electricity being generated but not used to an immersion coil in the bottom of the hot water tank. Installed by Renuvo, they did a great job of the solar, providing a well priced system and linking it in with the Immersun.
Air Source Heat Pump – 8.5kW Mitsubishi Ecodan and Mixergy smart hot water tank, installed by Indigo Renewables, a good Leicester based renewable specialist.
Topped up loft insulation – loft insulation re-organised or topped up where necessary. DIY job.
Plugged the gaps in the insulation – particularly the small rear roof that had no insulation – it’s worth looking at the areas that won’t have been done through a particular funding scheme i.e. flat roofs over bays, extensions etc. DIY job.
Tado smart thermostat and smart TRV’s – this works well with the heat pump, enabling us to ‘set-back’ temperatures overnight and when rooms aren’t in use therefore reducing the heat load.
A-rated appliances – when we are replacing appliances we buy as efficiently as we can (affordability comes into this).
Low energy LED lighting throughout.
Water butts (used to flush down stairs toilet via a bucket!) and other water saving devices – bottles filled with water in the toilet cisterns, pressure reducer in the shower head.
Electricity bought through Octopus in partnership with Ripple Energy. We no longer have gas to the house.
A recent loft conversion – maximized insulation and used triple glazed velux roof windows.
