Retrofitting your home: ‘The heat is retained for up to three days’
Credit: Irish Times, Journalist Colette Sheridan
Whether basic or more elaborate, getting work done on your house such as insulation, solar panels, a heat pump and an energy-efficient zoned heating boiler is environmental and cosy
Daniel Wyse and his partner live in a four-bed bungalow in Crosshaven, Co Cork. The house was built by Wyse’s partner’s father in 1999. It was always a cold house but, now that the attic and cavity walls have been insulated, the building energy rating (BER) has gone from D2 to B3. A new boiler with energy-efficient zoned heating was also installed.
The basic retrofit cost €2,750. Wyse says a grant of €300 was given for the attic and another €300 for the insulation of the walls. This work was done last August by Envirobead, an insulation contractor in Cork. Now, grants covering 80 per cent of the cost of minor works such as those carried out in his house are available. The new boiler cost €2,500 after a grant of €700 was awarded.
Wyse was spending a lot of money on coal for the back boiler. The new boiler uses oil. Ultimately, Wyse and his partner, who plan to move at sometime in the future, want a self-sufficient house. “But that won’t happen until there’s better technology. I’d love to have solar panels fuelling a heat pump, keeping the house warm at all times. We’ll see in years to come how much electricity the panels can gather.”
Describing himself as very environmentally conscious, Wyse studied environmental engineering at the former Cork Institute of Technology. He works in a pharmaceutical company.
