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We are the second owners of the house and moved here in 1970. Where it’s been sensible and affordable over the years we’ve done things to make the house more energy efficient and comfortable. I started out as an electrical engineer and the fact that I can understand the technical side and do some of the things myself has been helpful. Nothing we’ve done is remarkable, we’ve just gone on and done it instead of talking about it.
Both my wife and I come from from a rural area and I like to think I’ve got self sufficiency in our genes. I like the idea of doing sensible things that reduce our footprint whilst we’re on this earth.
It’s difficult to be precise about the savings we’ve made because we’ve been making improvements over a long period of time. The cavity wall insulation was one of the first measures and it had a dramatic effect on comfort and energy consumption. Most years we are self sufficient in hot water from May to September thanks to the solar thermal system.
The most recent measure we’ve installed, the solar PV. It’s very simple and very satisfying. The kit allows you to interrogate the system to see what’s going on so you can see the electricity that’s being generated, how it’s saving CO2 and so on. You go very quickly from being a consumer of energy to being a net exporter.