Manchester retrofit project complete
Wednesday, 07 October 2009 12:50
This week Kevin McCloud had a very hectic day in Manchester visiting two key places: the refurbished house of Rebecca Williams and the Conservative Party Conference.
The Great British Refurb Campaign partners spent the last few days in Manchester refurbishing Rebecca’s house to illustrate how straightforward and effective undertaking eco-refurbishment work can be. Kevin visited Rebecca’s house to see how a real refurbishment project works – how much it costs and how you can get the most effective carbon savings with minimum disruption to the occupants. He was thoroughly impressed with the work undertaken and the simplicity and effectiveness of the solutions and technologies used.
Rebecca Williams’s house is typical of many similar Victorian mid-terrace properties across the UK with lovely period features, as well as suspended wooden floors and solid walls which can be difficult to insulate. So this week the Great British Refurb campaign team refurbished her house to show people how simple and straightforward it can be to significantly reduce the carbon emissions from a home – even those beloved older properties with some tricky features.
The campaign team spent £2,173 in total and by carefully targeting this cash on the most cost effective measures to achieve the greatest carbon reductions they achieved a reduction of 1.2 tonnes of C02 per year. This means that Rebecca’s energy use drops from 27,000 KW hours per annum to 21,000 KW hours per annum and this will be reflected on all of her future energy bills as a massive £240 saving.
The work completed was:
- Cellar insulation
- Draught proofing
- Kitchen side wall internal insulation
- Front bed room wall internal insulation
- Loft insulation top up (100mm to 270mm)
- Kitchen low energy lights
- Room thermostat and boiler load compensation
- Electiricity monitor and energy efficiency advice
The cost also included the survey, insurance, audit and verification of the work done.
Kevin’s visit coincided with the Conservative Party Conference where he took the stage for a few minutes and joined in for their ‘Green Economy’ debate, using the opportunity to tell the Conservatives that ordinary homeowners need bold political support in order to reduce the carbon emissions from the 26 million homes we own. The Conservatives were keen to know how much he thought you needed to spend on your ‘average home’ in order to raise its energy performance, but as many homeowners know, there’s no such thing as ‘average’. Kevin pointed out that many of the millions of homes across the country have features such as solid walls that can be harder to treat.
