Taking ‘Little Lookout’ into the 21st Century

If you drive along Dumpford Road it may escape your notice but our lovely house Little Lookout has had a little makeover!

Following the purchase of the three bedroomed ex-council semi in April 2021, we decided we needed to modernise our home, not just decoratively but with a mind to improve its eco-efficiency. With a downstairs bathroom, an EPC rating of F, solid fuel heating and hot water, there was plenty of scope for improvement. A small idea became quite a large project and we had to move out for eight weeks!

We installed an air source heat pump, solar panels and electrical car charging point. Contrary to our research, we didn’t need to replace all of our radiators with larger ones (though we did replace all of the internal plumbing). We used one company Eco-Net for the whole installation and electrical work and they were brilliant (mention us if you use them and we get a little referral prize!).

Our loft now looks like mission control with batteries, inverters, pipes, Eddie, Zappi, apps for this and that. These all do take some getting used to and when we had an electricity outage were a little awkward to re-boot. There is a lot to be said for our mission control though, today has been sunny and we have charged up the car, heated the water for our luxury shower (no baths here), used the cooker and all for 40p! I’m not sure you can get better than that, can you?

We now, not only have a beautifully modernised home, but an ecologically friendly one too, given the added insulation and LEDs. With these updates we now anticipate an EPC rating of C or higher.

Body of report:

Researching our best options, roof space etc, we applied for planning permission to extend the house by 29% and decided on having an air source heat pump, solar panels, inverters, 5kw battery storage and a zappi car charger for our existing BMW electric car.

On looking into government support we discovered that we needed cavity wall insulation in order to qualify for any grants available. Following this work being completed we qualified and were accepted for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. It had also increased from £5,000 to £7500 which was a welcome bonus!

Our solar system comprises of 8 Trina Vertex S390W all black mono solar panels, GivEnergy 3.6kW hybrid inverter, 1 GivEnergy 5.2kWh LiFePO4 battery.

Total equipment costs £8600.

According to the calculations, by year 8 it should have paid for itself and over 25 years saved us £45,582.

Our Air Source Heat Pump was installed in our garden and is a little noisy, however we have built a cover to go around it which helps. We have turned it off for the summer period. It is a Daikin Altherma Low temperature monobloc model.

Our car charger is a Zappi, when our car is plugged in and on the eco settings it just uses a drip feed electricity charge for a longer period, adapting to changes over the time periods when there is spare energy made by the solar panels. Very intuitive.

Our battery is one of the best parts of our system, we only wish we had put two 5kW storage in at the time - and we would like to install a further battery to make use of this. It is easy to control the use of the battery through the GivEnergy app but you need to keep on your toes with it!

Energy suppliers – we have found that Octopus Energy are the best for our system. They do a cosy rate especially designed for air source heat pump and solar panel users. We make use of the three discounted periods of the day that have low price energy and try to limit our use between 4pm – 7pm where it is the most expensive. If there has been limited sunshine the GivEnergy app allows us to programme the car charge/water charge etc. Selling back to the grid has not been so successful, we seem to only make around £5 per month (prices fluctuate during the day but nothing like we buy it for) – but then if we are being prudent with our energy we don’t want to give away much!

Despite teething problems and a small water leak from the air source heat pump which was quickly rectified, the use of the apps makes management of this system efficient. We can track our energy consumption and generation at the touch of a button.

We would highly recommend!