GBRC

I've long wanted to improve the carbon performance of our family's home, but never had either the money or the expertise to tackle it seriously.

We, in the Huntingdonshire District Council have teamed up with the Building Research Establishment (BRE) as part of their ‘Rethinking Refurbishment’ campaign to demonstrate how typical family homes can be refurbished affordably and easily, not only to reduce carbon emissions but to be cheaper, comfortable and more efficient to run.

Read Tony Kemp's blog on Apollo Property retrofitting programme for Crawley Borough Council

We’ve just started work on a retrofit programme for Crawley Borough Council.  It’s a project funded through Technology Strategy Board’s national Retrofit for the Future competition and it involves us working on three very different properties as part of a pilot scheme to generate exemplars demonstrating how to reduce energy usage and cut waste at home.

The election is providing an interesting backdrop to our week at Grand Designs Live. The Great British Refurb campaign is here amongst the solar panels and sliding door exhibits to get thousands of people to support us in lobbying the new government on policies to support a mass low carbon retrofit of UK's homes.

One of the first questions I was asked from a couple who came over to the stand was- 'how can you be planning to lobby a government when you don't know who it's going to be yet?' Fair question. There are lots we don’t know and even after May 6th it will be a few weeks till we know exactly what we're dealing with but there's one opportunity we have no matter what happens with the election.

Whether the new government's motivation is reducing householders bills, protecting against expected energy price rises, meeting the UK's climate change targets or stimulating the UK's economy, kicking off a mass homes retrofit programme should be high on the list of anyone in their first year in office. There's no other big way of tackling climate change that is likely to be as popular with voters, that requires no new technological inventions and can be well underway within the first phase of a new government. In essence how this plays out will tell you how serious the new government is about climate change- if they don't seize the opportunity with a mass homes retrofit then I, for one, will be pretty concerned about how they're going to manage to make the UK a low carbon economy. However if our new government does launch a great british refurb plan in the first year they may find the thousands of people we're speaking to this week ready to take part.

It seems like yesterday that Keepmoat workers descended on our home in Bristol, packed up belongings and stripped out old doors and kitchen and bathroom fittings. It's incredible to think of the extent of the refurbishments that have been achieved in such a short time frame - hats off to Keepmoat, SolarCentury and Knauf Insulation for working together to pull it off in such good time!

We had a lot of fun on our first day back in the house, with sponsors, parents, film crews and reporters all admiring the changes. We've only spent a few days back in the house now, but we're in no doubt that the house is a lot warmer and more comfortable in each room than we could have achieved prior to the refurb - no matter how much heating we may have wanted to use.

So you’ve seen Will’s solar home and are inspired?

(Will, we’re really glad you’re chuffed with your new mini power station).

The UK’s newly announced Feed-in tariff brings a new dawn for generating electricity with solar power in the UK. The new scheme means homeowners producing solar electricity will earn income from energy generation, benefit from significant savings on electricity bills and cut carbon emissions. It’s estimated that you can save and earn over £1,000 per year for 25 years, increasing with inflation, with a typical solar electric system.  Because of this, the Government hopes one in every ten homes will be solar by 2020.

So what next?

Check out your roof. It will need to be up to it, meaning not caving in with significant structural problems. As long as it’s not north facing or shaded for most of the day, you’re likely to be able to consider going solar.  

I remember when generating electricity from the sun seemed closer to science fiction fantasy than a realistic and practical means of micro-energy generation. That was up until yesterday; when I became another homeowner in the UK with the capacity to generate green electricity from an otherwise very ordinary rooftop.