Personal story:

Richard and Tina live in this house with their two children, aged 7 and 9. Tina is a researcher on energy policy and climate change. We both think it is important to try and live in a lower carbon way, and improving our home is part of that.

Motivations:

Concern about climate change and wanting to reduce our fossil fuel usage was the main driver to action, but we also wanted a more thermally comfortable house and needed to solve condensation and mould problems with our solid walls. Our refurbishment has evolved over the years, starting with the basics – loft insulation, draft proofing, new boiler, efficient lights and appliances – in what was originally a very inefficient home. Additional measures have been added over the years when doing conventional building and improvement work and when ‘opportunities’ (such as needing to replace a rotting dining room floor) have arisen.

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Property background:

The house is a 1900s semi. When Richard first bought it about 14 years ago, it had a very old back boiler, single glazed windows, a very cold downstairs extension for the bathroom and no insulation to speak of.

Key changes made:

The two most satisfying changes have probably been the solid wall insulation (SWI) and the solar water heating (SWH). The SWI has made a real different to the way the house feels, it’s much more comfortable than before, and has saved a considerable amount of energy. Also it was satisfying to use an ‘eco’ material – wood fibre, Pavatherm – rather than the conventional materials we have used elsewhere in the home. The SWH provides most of our hot water in a summer with some sunshine – and it just feels good to make use of that renewable resource. In terms of carbon / energy saved per £ spent, neither of these measures scored particularly highly compared with a lot of the other things we have installed, but they deliver more benefits than just energy savings!

Read more about Tina Fawcett’s renovation here.

Measures installed in detail:

• All windows double glazed or triple glazed
• External insulation – side wall with 100mm of Pavatex.
• Internal insulation front and back walls with 60mm, with overlap to side wall, on ground floor only.
• Loft Insulation – 300mm
• Underfloor insulation (hemp) in suspended wooden floor in much of ground floor. Polystyrene insulation under concrete kitchen floor.
• Draught proofing
• Condensing boiler installed, room thermostat, most radiators with TRVs
• Wood burning stove
• Solar thermal flat plate panels
• Light pipe in upstairs hallway
• Low energy lighting, some LEDs
• Water saving devicesTo read Tina’s blog on the eco renovation of the house click here:
• Solar PV

Benefits of work carried out:

Gas use has about halved from when we first owned the house. Then it was occupied by one person out at work all day. Now it is occupied by a family of four, occupied most days, and is bigger, as it has been extended. It’s a much more comfortable house to live in, and no longer has mould, condensation and damp problems, except for a couple of areas of solid wall, yet to be insulated.

Favourite feature:

My favourite feature is the solid wall insulation. It has made the house much more comfortable, saved a lot of energy and solved condensation and mould problems everywhere it has been fitted. The internal insulation – front and back walls downstairs – hasn’t disturbed the look of the rooms or made them feel smaller. The external insulation – which you may be able to spot on the side wall in the house picture – is equally unobtrusive.

Project update:

Our loft conversion was completed last autumn, as was installation of solar PV. Both very successful – and even in this less-than-sunny summer, our PV panels quite often generate more electricity than we use each day.

Updated on 15/07/2016

Common questions and answers for this SuperHome

Which installer did the internal and external wall insulation?+

We were lucky in finding an installer for the internal wall insulation through a contact. Unfortunately he’s no longer in this business. We did recently try to get a quote for a bit more internal insulation, and did find one suitably experienced builder who might have been prepared to do it – the only one on the ‘approved’ list for Pavatex, the insulation material we chose. We got his contact details from Natural Building Technologies.

However, we didn’t end up getting the work done due to timing problems, and have postponed getting this done. It might be easier to find somebody to use more conventional insulation materials – but certainly there are very few working with Pavatex (a wood fibre insulation).

We used a different contractor for the external wall insulation – Merl Cunliffe. This was also Pavetex. I haven’t been in touch with him since he did the work at our house (approximately 6 years ago) but assume he’s still in the business. There are more details on our renovation here which include Merl’s contact details.

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