Low carbon for the climate emergency
Globally the signs of climate breakdown are becoming more and more frequent and people are wanting to know how they can THINK GLOBAL, ACT LOCAL. Doing whatever you can to use as little heat as possible in your home, whilst keeping warm, is very important though understanding the options can be very difficult.
Who owns your home? How was it constructed? Is it in a Conservation Area? How much would it cost to do all the improvements possible? All important questions that should be answered by creating a plan for the whole house to tackle cold spots as money and circumstances allow.
The Highgate Society and Muswell Hill Sustainability Group arranged a talk on 12th Oct 2020 and Cara Jenkinsons slides are here: Green Homes Grant and the recording is at MHSG Utube channel. Josie Evetts of Ecofurb went through their services. You can use the free Ecofurb Plan Builder on their website to get an idea of what energy efficiency improvements would work best for your home. And to access an end to end service giving advice, quotations from vetted local installers, and quality assurance, you can get in touch by sending in your draft plan. Ecofurb has been set up by Parity Projects, used by many MHSG members over the years.
Josie explained that all work must be conducted by a business accredited by TrustMark and MCS for solar. See here for TrustMark lists of businesses.
The Zoom attendees were promised a list of useful references and these are lower down.
Later update: The Green Homes Grant was withdrawn for domestic applicants in March 2021, so householders need to fully fund low carbon works.
A takeaway doc can be downloaded as a Powerpoint or as jpgs below. (right click and choose save image)
Later update. References to the Green Homes Grant should be ignored.
In the UK buildings are categorised by energy performance certificates (EPCs) where A is snug and G is horrible. This shows how far we have to go to move those D’s to As!
Those EPCs give rather an approximate view of measures that could be taken and the costs. Where there are several measures planned the role of retrofit co-ordinator has recently been created to do a bespoke, experienced plan and ensure that tradespeople can be trusted. Enquire about this to Eco-furb.
The London Building Stock Model (beta) has a helicopter view of London properties and likely energy efficiency measures based on EPCs here.
See where your house loses heat with a Thermal camera
Transforming a house with low carbon measures
Natalie Black of enbee Architecture and Design and Jeremy Stacey of Jeremy Stacey Architects speak about their local deep home retrofit projects.
Note that some of these measures would require extra permissions in a Conservation Area. See Permissions for more information.
