Very impressive "zero energy" Victorian refurb

[KenB]

I suppose one way of thinking about the financing of an eco-refurb - is that you are effectively buying a Green Pension.

By investing 10% of your income paying for a Green Deal mortgage, you are effectively hedging against the effects of massive increases in energy prices which are fairly likely to happen in the next 20 or 30 years.

When entering retirement in 20 to 25 years time, the green improvements made to the property, will hopefully be paid off. The green refurb will reduce energy bills considerably - and as energy costs are a large percentage of a pensioner's expenditure - these savings on energy costs are effectively additional income. 

There is also an advantage of "getting ahead of the herd",  because costs of insulation - regardless of whether it is petroleum based or natural products such as sheeps wool or shredded fibre will increase as a result of rising oil prices.

This logic can also be applied to the provision of new Green infrastructure, if we are going to stand a chance of doing it effectively, we need to start now, when we still have a little "easy oil" left to run the green industries.  As oil declines and the EROI of the remaining reserves increases considerably, there will be some industrial tasks that just cannot be done.

Now the next question is how far can you go with a suburban semi in reducing the overall energy consumption?  What improvements return the best reduction of consumption on the investment.  Is there a practical series of piece-meal improvements that can be done as and when finance allows - or do you just have to borrow that £25K, find a reputable contractor and have all the disruptive work done at once?


Ken

[Quakered]

Well we have been in our house for 37 years so can support the piecemeal approach! The house had round pin electrics and a coal Aga boiler providing heat to 1 radiator and the hot water. Most the walls were solid. The first “improvement” was a total rewire and then gas central heating. Clearly no energy savings but at least “liveable”. I did the calculations for heat loss when sizing the heating at this came to over 19kw for a small 3 bed detached house – not that fuel was expensive in those days!

We built an extension on two sides of the house that increase floor space by 40% but decreased energy needs by 10%.

With old age approaching and the likelihood that energy was going to rise faster than inflation during out dotage, I decided on a major investment in energy saving on the assumption that increased age would also mean increased heat and retirement would mean more time in the house. I hate borrowing money so decided to have annual project funded from available free cash. Using free cash rather than borrowed money makes the payback look far more attractive (and also necessitate some free cash).

The first (very simple) change was to increase loft insulation from 50mm to 300. Huge improvement in comport and slightly lower winter bills.

The next was getting the few cavity walls in the house insulated. Very cheap via energy company and again a small decrease in energy usage.

The west and exposed house wall is solid and architect friend pointed us in the right direction for  external insulation. Had 100mm fitted and again improvement in comfort and reduced bills. The following year the “investment” went into a new bathroom and condensing boiler. Again reduced bills.

The following year we insulated the other side of the house with 50mm and the insulation project was completed just before the coldest winter in 30 years. Energy bills were (slightly) less than the previous year. I thought this was a real result! I still have the heat needs spreadsheet and I reckon our heat needs are 6kw or less than a  third of that needed when we moved into the house all those years ago. Our actual consumption over the winter was under 2kw per hour.

This year’s investment was the PV and (hopefully) the wood stove.

I agree with those who see payback as less than the whole story. Insulation improves the comfort of the house as the temperature is more stable and is certain to be warmer than you had the house before. I also believe that energy usage is going to form part of the house buying criteria as the years pass and an energy efficient house is going to be worth more than one that is not (back to the old days when central heating was a real plus!)

I also worry that people still think about borrowing money. I have been a Victorian prude about this for years and hoped that the recent financial turmoil would have persuaded more that borrowing was not the right way. I appreciate that we all needed to borrow money to get on the housing ladder but after that no more borrowing it my approach!

Sorry to preach and I will now leave the pulpit!

[Quakered]

Can anyone point me in the direction of current technique(s) for exterior insulation cladding techniques (cheers) as i've failed to find much ((admittedly useless, ..must be cos i'm middle class  allegedly))  ..I think our only way out of the current climate mess, older housing stock is being ignored & yet if you can factory make a huuf haus then you should be able to overcome the past 40 years of uk housing stock if approached & invested in seriously.
 

Sorry Mr Gus,

Forgot to answer your question. We used these guy as suggested by architect friend http://www.sto.co.uk/ .We had some difficulty finding a contractor interested in part of a single house. Most were only interested in doing a whole estate or block of flats. The first guy did a reasonable job but was much distracted by his first love of the bottle. The second had the more complex job and had a team of East Europeans who were brilliant and did a just superb job. Since you are not in SW London suspect neither would be appropriate. The STO office in Basingstoke was very helpful.

There was also a “green building” centre near Waterloo that has lots of displays of insulation options. Can’t remember the name or exact location however they did not seem very interested so went for the full German chemical jobby!