What do you do when you live in an Edwardian family home in Oxford but you want to conserve energy? Eco-renovation is a route that´s becoming increasingly popular as the owners of older homes try and make them as energy-efficient as new houses being built in an age of global warming.
Dr Richard Blundel, a Senior Lecturer in Enterprise Development with The Open University Business School, and his wife Dr Tina Fawcett, an Environmental Researcher with the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, have spent years transforming their home into an energy efficient one.
Richard told Platform: “We have improved the energy efficiency of our home over a number of years, with the latest changes being the most extensive – the installation of internal and external solid wall and under-floor insulation in late 2009, using eco materials.” Other eco features include: condensing gas boiler, extensive loft insulation, double glazed sash and casement windows, solar water heating, light pipe, low energy lights and appliances, wood-burning stove, some use of eco paints and finishes.
Beyond the energy and carbon savings, there have been other important benefits: “Warmer inside walls which have resolved condensation and mould problems; more thermally comfortable space; no slugs! And our home now smells faintly of new wood rather than depressing damp. Lovely,” says Tina.
Take a video tour around Richard and Tina’s home:
Useful links
- Read Tina’s blog about the eco-renovation
- Energy Saving Trust
- Ecovation
- For calculating and monitoring your own carbon emissions try the carbon calculator and imeasure.
- Research about energy use and climate change
- Richard’s research on eco-renovation: exploring the socio-technical challenges of a low-carbon transition
- Richard’s research page at The Open University
- Tina’s research page at ECI, University of Oxford
Here Richard and Tina chat to Documentally in their back garden…
More useful links
The Creative Climate project – a global web diary that will record how humanity understands and responds to environmental change over the next 10 years.
Comments
Maybe it's a bit cheeky to comment on a film I'm in - but just wanted to add a couple of details we forget when the camera was rolling. Firstly, energy and carbon savings - a simple comparison between energy used this Jan and Feb and last shows we have saved 20% of our gas usage, which equates to around 30% of our heating energy use (saved as a result of the wall and floor insulation). I'm very pleased with this as a result. Secondly, our household energy carbon emissions are now around 45% of the UK average - which is quite good given that the house is occupied most of the time, most days- but I hope we can continue to find ways of reducing this figure.
Not cheeky at all Tina - it's interesting to learn what the eco-renovation translates to in terms of energy savings and therefore financial savings. I think people will be interested to learn of the benefits of renovating a home specifically to conserve energy in case they're thinking of trying it themselves.
Great Video but greater still is the fact that you bothered to turn theory & ideas into real-world implementation and now reap the benefits.
As an engineer I am appalled at the low level of design in houses; I won't list the design flaws here but one here about energy efficiency which you have tackled very well.
What a great example to us all to have a go.
With what will become even more essential than when the 'Limits to Growth' and 'Small is Beautiful' and others drew our attention to this in the early 1970s.
Do you have please any web site links (understand you are not advertising or recommending products) for info about:
Insulation materials you used
Solar water heating panels you used
I can recommend the CAT web site for general info about energy and re-newable sources.
Many thanks, regards,
Paul H. Brinklow (ex OU student now lecturer)
Paul - apologies for the delay in replying.
The internal and external wall insulation material were Pavatex and Pavadentro, supplied by Natural Building Technologies (www.natural-building.co.uk) using a lime plaster / render to cover them. For underfloor insulation we used hemp batts, also supplied by NBT.
Our solar water heating panels were installed several years ago, and I'm not sure I want to recommend the manufacturer or installer. We had to have the panels replaced this summer (under guarantee) due to a manufacturing fault. This didn't cost us anything, but was nevertheless disappointing. Unfortunately we're still trying to rectify another problem - leaking circulation fluid we think - with our installer, which is taking longer than we'd hoped. So - until this summer I'd have happily recommended both - but now I'm not so sure! On a more positive note, I met somebody recently who had had her solar water heating installed for over 20 years with no faults or maintenance required, so it may be we have been unlucky.