With fuel bills seemingly always on the rise and concerns about Co2 growing each year, making properties more efficient and lower cost to live in is now vitally important.
Here at Westville Group we’ve been helping home owners, landlords and councils make their properties more efficient for years, but just how far can you with this exactly? Well, thanks to the latest modern retrofitting techniques, and something known as “super insulation”, you can now make your home more efficient, comfortable, and environmentally friendly than ever.
A great example of this is a property which the Westville Group team are very proud to have worked on, which is part of the “SuperHomes Network”, a group of 200+ energy aware households who are pioneering in energy efficient living and redefining what it means to have a “green” home.
All members of the SuperHomes Network have refurbished old homes to the very highest standards of energy efficiency, cutting their reliance on fossil fuels, decreasing energy usage and minimising fuel bills.
The Super Insulated Home
The property in question that we worked on was a 3 bedroom detached home in West Bridgford, Nottingham. Built in 1952 the building was susceptible to many of the energy efficiency problems that houses of that age have, including windows, solid walls and a loft all of which leaked huge amounts of heat and failed to keep the interior warm.
After fixing several major issues with the property such as replacing the kitchen and bathroom which were falling apart, and dealing with the sinking garage, cracked drains, and spalling brickwork, it was time to focus on the energy efficiency.
In the home owners own words, “[I] used to wear 3 fleeces indoors and still feel cold, the temperature used to yo-yo all the time, ands the hall was always bitterly cold”, so it was obvious that work needed doing to make this home, warm, efficient and green. This wasn’t to be just any standard home though, this was to be a SuperHome, and as such the efficiency measures installed were extensive.
That’s where we came in.
The Work Carried Out
Our remit for this project was to “Super Insulate” the home, helping to create a very air tight envelope to keep the heat in and the cold out, ensuring that there were no gaps that heat could leak from.
This included:
- External Wall Insulation (also known as solid wall insulation)
- Floor Insulation
- Loft Insulation
These measures made a massive difference to the overall feel and efficiency of the home, and that wasn’t all of it. Along with our work, other measures installed included:
- Condensing Boiler
- Draught Proofing
- Low Energy Appliances
- Low Energy Lighting
- Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery
- Solar PV Panels
- Triple Glazing
- Water Saving Devices
The Results
It’s safe to say that the results from this energy efficient retrofit were amazing. The two key figures afterwards were:
- 67% carbon saving
- 100% saving on energy bills
This shows that the super insulation and energy efficiency measures made this property much more energy efficient and environmentally friendly.
Not only that though, the human impact that was had was incredible, with the home owners themselves commenting on how much more pleasant the property was to live in after the work.
“We took a whole house approach and this has worked very well in both increasing comfort and reducing energy use. It is hard to express just how great the difference is. Now the whole house is pleasantly warm and temperature very stable. Likewise air quality is greatly improved…Condensation and mould on windows and walls are a distant memory.”
Since the work has been carried out the home owners have been very happy with the results, and the property has been used as a show home to the public, letting them find out first hand just how much of a difference can be made by super insulation and other such energy efficiency measures.
With vastly reduced energy bills & carbon footprint, alongside a much more comfortable home, it’s not hard to see why this sort of working is becoming ever more popular all across the UK.
See below for images of the home where the super insulation work was carried out.
For more information about the work carried out in West Bridgford, or to find out more about super insulation and how we can help with your energy efficiency project, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Westville Group team today. Call us on 0800 1583605, email us using our contact page, or leave a comment below and a member of our team will be ready to help.
