Bungalow, hosted by Gary

Our home needed quite a bit of work, our first winter was miserable and cold. The house was really drafty and needed a replacement roof, windows and we tested diy underfloor insulation in our front room, which is the coldest room in the house. This worked really well, so we insulated the other ground floor rooms using the ecological building system. We opted to invest in solar panels and a home battery, swapping the car for an EV and an Octopus Electric time of use tariff. The last aspect was moving to an air source heat pump. A Heat geek trained plumber conducted a heat assessment, which required upgraded radiators, water tank which is in the loft and a Viessmann Air Source Heat Pump.

We used to put the gas central heating on only when needed. An air source heat pump is best when running continuously, the radiators do not feel hot but the house is consistently warm. Our heat pump was fitted mid March, our first night it was too hot, the house is constant temperature and we have reduced the temperature to 19 degrees during the day and 18 at night. April this year was chilly and our electricity bill was £66, around £11 more than the previous year but the previous year’s gas bill was £96 and we were away a week on holiday. This includes the heating on 24/7 and charging the car. We have independent monitoring via Open Energy Monitoring equipment, which publishes the performance data publicly. Before summer we had a coefficient of performance of 4.3, that 430% efficient. During the summer this has reduced as expected to 3.8, due to only heating hot water but is expected to rise during the heating.