Keith and Kathryn Searle

Personal Story:

The house is one of thousands built to the appalling standards prevalent in the 1970s. It hasn’t really been a project but more a process of steady improvement as and when I could over the last 30 odd years since we moved in. When we bought it it was next to open fields. Since then a housing estate has been built on the fields although, luckily, there is a very large open space next to us and more or less everything we need is within walking distance. I did the loft and cavity wall long before the government woke up to the idea. When we installed the heat pump we also knew that we weren’t eligible for grants or payments of any kind but I thought it would still pay off. I think I was right and we haven’t regretted it for a moment. My son Tom did a lot of the building work for us and he has also been bitten by the energy saving bug.

Motivations:

I don’t like waste in any form so energy conservation is a fairly natural thing for me to do.

We now have an electric car (a Nissan Leaf). We have also had our roof insulated with Icynene. In 2008/9 we were using 18876 kWhrs/yr, which was a mixture of gas and electric. We are now purely electric and my smart meter tells me that we will use 4804kWhrs/yr. That is total consumption NOT just space heating. It includes some car charging.

Measures:

By far the biggest change we’ve made is the extension. Being built to higher building standards, I think it improved the thermal insulation and air tightness of the house. That, coupled with the refurbishment, has resulted in a house without draughts and altogether warmer for a much lower energy consumption. It also allowed us to put in a downstairs toilet and completely redo the bathroom which, in turn, made possible the internal insulation. We added an unheated conservatory in the winter of 2009 and this further helps reduce our heat loss.

Benefits:

I don’t have figures for the cost savings because the process started about 30 years ago with me adding more loft insulation followed, a little later, by having the cavity walls insulated. In the early days I couldn’t have easily quantified our energy figures because we had a coal fire. In terms of energy usage, this has dropped from 16965 kWhrs in 2007-2008 to 6947 kWhrs in 2011-2012. I’m hopeful that this year will see a further reduction, down to about 6500 kWhrs.

Favourite Feature:

There is no single feature that stands out, everything we’ve done has either improved our living space or reduced our heat losses.