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00:00engineer for nearly 30 years I get asked all the time how do I save money on energy costs
00:06well retrofitting is all over the news lately and in this series I'm traveling around Ireland
00:13checking out homes that are getting energy upgrades that dark blue is the coldest this
00:18is typically what I'd expect to see in an old house with prices only going up and the planet
00:24under pressure more and more people are saving money and energy in their homes by taking on
00:29the retrofit challenge I'll be showing you what's actually doable and what kind of grants are out
00:35there to help from heat pumps to HVAC I'll break down the technical jargon and make sense of all
00:41the retrofit lingo so it's easy to follow you're just bamboozled with all the decisions that need
00:45to be made so come with me as we retrofit Ireland and discover how you can reduce your energy costs
00:53this is heat my home
00:59today I'm on my way to meet 39 year old software engineer Adam O'Brien who was currently living at
01:07home with his parents in Balancholic in Cork this temporary stay is pending on a major energy
01:13retrofit of his grandparents house which he bought from the family two years ago it's a 1950s era bungalow
01:20on the Commons Road in Cork Adam hopes to bring this house up from an F to at least a B2 energy rating and
01:28he is doing a lot of the work himself on the house to which he has a strong emotional connection
01:34my mother grew up in the house they moved in sometime in the 60s my grandfather had gotten a job across
01:40the road in the HGW factory which then became the Dulux paint factory the house was freezing we all lived in
01:48the dining room and the kitchen and of course then they got the gas but my mother would have been delighted
01:54that Adam has it and the fact that he's doing all this work now to make it such a habitable
02:00and warm comfortable house my initial fears going in to doing the work myself was am i doing it correctly
02:07am i doing it the right way looking up youtube videos asking friends who've kind of done the same
02:13sort of thing you kind of realize that any direction that you go will be the right one there's no major
02:18mistakes if anything does happen it may take a bit more time and a bit more money but you can go back from your
02:23mistakes the initial dream was to get my own place somewhere that i'm comfortable in i came into the
02:29house with three priorities i wanted the place fully rewired i want a nice big kitchen and i want it warm
02:35and dry after 15 plus years of renting in different houses i've done a couple of winters without central
02:40heating i'm just kind of craving somewhere warm and dry
02:47climbing the steps up to Adam's house i can see he's well underway with the clearing out
02:51and i'm curious to get a rundown on his plan of action for this big project i see you're up and
02:57running with some work already anyway yeah just a little bit of debris outside you've a lot of
03:01the big thick old block walls and the breeze blocks what's your plan on the outside from a
03:06kind of an insulation perspective i'm going to go with the external insulation so the entire house
03:12will be encased in hard insulation it's the most expensive way to insulate your house but it's a
03:18really good way because the dew point on the insulation is on the outer surface so it just
03:23blows off in the wind i'm dying to see how you're getting on inside yeah come on
03:30so this used to be the good room this floor was suspended so i've started filling in the sub base
03:37floor with recycled materials from elsewhere in the house yeah the important thing here is you've got to
03:42watch cold bridging that you're going to have edge insulation around the edges so that the walls which
03:47will be typically a bit colder won't transmit any coldness to help reduce heat loss putting an
03:54insulating barrier between the wall and the floor around the edges is a simple way to reduce thermal
04:00bridging which affects areas of a building where cold can be transferred more easily due to breaks in
04:05the insulation i tell you the windows don't look that old are you keeping these are you upgrading them
04:11they'll be upgraded to triple glazed on top of having the triple glazed which will dramatically reduce the
04:16noise outside the air tightness membrane around the windows will help with air leakage so a kind
04:21of a double benefit next up on the interior tour i take a look at the attic and there are no surprises
04:27here this is typically what i'd expect to see in an old house sometimes you wouldn't even have
04:32insulation but you have an amount of insulation here already it's the only insulation in the house
04:37so this should be taken out and replaced with new insulation one of the most important things in an
04:43old attic like this is like you see here that's old sarking felt which has no breathability whatsoever
04:50so when you've all your insulating and air titers and everything done in the house you need to make
04:54sure this area can still breathe because it will be cold and you can potentially get condensation on
04:59the underside of the sarking felt so you need to make sure you have adequate ventilation the attic can
05:04be the main culprit for heat loss in any house so i'm going to carry out a quick test to check for any
05:10possible trouble spots what i have here is a thermal imaging camera what it does show you is it shows
05:16you where you some of the cold spots so areas that are basically soaking cold into your house right
05:22when you look at here now you can see the insulation in between the joists it's doing a little bit of
05:26work it's not deep enough but the biggest issue is that the timbers in between the insulation are
05:31actually cold bridging you can see them as cold lines on the thermal imaging camera so what you'll be
05:36doing here now you'll be laying insulation between the joists and you'll also be laying insulation
05:41over the joists the benefit of that is they're no longer bringing coldness back into your building
05:47we're done with the interior for now and adam takes me to the garden to reveal his plans for the roof
05:53so out here i'm hoping to place solar panels this is south facing so it's obviously the best place to
05:59put them and so the plans have about eight panels adam's plan to install solar panels on the south
06:07facing roof is a fantastic idea and will be a good source of electricity for the house
06:13even in dull irish winter weather solar pv is viable as the panels generate power from light
06:20not heat and can still produce some electricity on a day with heavy cloud
06:24after an in-depth viewing of the house it's over to adam's family home where we go through
06:31some of the costs involved although he's doing a lot of the initial works himself adam has decided
06:37to avail of the one-stop shop program for everything else see how we're doing generally one of the
06:42advantages of going to the one-stop shop was that i wouldn't have to manage multiple contractors across
06:48multiple weeks months or even years so this is a fantastic hub yeah i mean look the reason
06:54an awful lot to doing a deep retrofit there's a lot of different contractors doing a lot of
06:58different things and they all have to be staged and there's a bit of working putting all the
07:02grant together so i guess there's a bit of value in all the project management yeah there is entirely
07:07definitely so the total cost of all the works before the grants is a whopping 83 427 euros and of course
07:17the total cost of retrofit works after grants is 48 867 it's still a very large sum of money but this
07:25is a single payment and i suppose you're looking at the lifetime of your home as a long-term investment
07:31and many years of living in a very comfortable home and of course dramatically reduced energy bills
07:37yeah and i think it's somewhere that my parents that my mother can come over or my aunts and uncles and
07:42cousins and still get the feel that it joe it's still in the family but now it's something new and
07:47exciting all right thank you very much we'll see you again thanks very much karen right you've a lot
07:52of work to do i definitely do nice of luck take care thanks very much so we've spoken about some very
07:59big figures there and this is after adam doing a lot of the demolition work himself he still has a load
08:04more to do and i'm looking forward to crying back to see if he gets it all done because it is a huge task
08:15it's day one on site for the contractors and adam has popped by to check on progress for the first
08:21big ticket item of this retrofit project the new windows i'm feeling excited about it because it is
08:28obviously the first step it's something i've been kind of waiting for it's the first big job to getting
08:33it warm getting it dry getting it a bit quieter as well because of the main road i understand that
08:38my grandmother kind of got used to it over the years also for some of the windows that are being
08:42put in they're essentially smaller pains for less vibration it's not the end of the line for the old
08:47windows as adam has a plan for them the windows that were taken out they had to cut the frames to
08:53take them out properly the initial idea was that the quickest thing is to kind of just break the
08:57windows themselves and just take everything out but my brother down in west cork was hoping to get the
09:02windows to be able to recycle them into a greenhouse so it's another aspect where the windows will be
09:06recycled the windows are in and the next job to be tackled is the external insulation which consists
09:12of slabs of rigid insulation covering the entire outside of the house the guys are putting it together
09:18and it provides obviously a greater layer of insulation a greater layer of keeping the heat in to
09:24the house the guys start with kind of a white plinth at the bottom and then kind of build up with this kind
09:29of rougher insulation material that can take on a bit of plaster the guys only started this morning
09:34so this has only been a few hours the only difficulty for them really is just being able to
09:39cut around windows and everything else say the gable wall doesn't have any windows so that will just
09:43be plonk plonk plonk straight away the work continues at a blistering pace but lead contractor
09:49jamie has spotted a problem that could slow things down this being your your neighbor's alleyway
09:55they've been kind enough to allow us to do this wall but at the very end of the wall there that gate
10:00would need to be removed right and then attach it to to their wall so we can insulate that part
10:06alternatively we can go all the way down to the end of this lame way the little bit at the corner
10:10the workaround will be we can do internal insulation on that room there yeah on the wall facing out if
10:16you get okay i'd have to assess like the for the internal what would that look like the gable end
10:22wall comes as far as this line here so the gate is attached the other side of this wall so if your
10:28neighbors don't allow you move that gate we can't externally insulate this section of the wall now
10:34the workaround would be this whole wall here gets a internal slabbing i have to think about it i don't
10:42want to annoy the neighbors sure again more than more than i have to yeah yeah um and so it does again
10:48kind of more doubly insulate this room as well this has always been the wettest one you can kind of see
10:52remnants of mold and everything in this corner sure so i'll just have to assess it because it's just
10:56a small other job for myself to get done but yeah today i'm on my way to catch up with adam o'brien
11:07from cork who's carrying out a deep retrofit on his grandparents house which he purchased a couple of
11:13years ago since i last visited adam he has done an amount of work on the property both the windows
11:21and external wrap have been installed and the solar panels which will supply a good portion of his
11:26electricity for the house have been fitted on the roof but there's still lots to be done and adam's
11:34place is a hive of activity hello adam garen i'm seeing loads of bands outside today what's happening
11:40so the ventilation system is being finalized put in uh the second fixing as it's called the conduits
11:46were put in previously for it deducting for all the air so now they're popping it in and checking it
11:52out and then while they're up there in the attic they're finalizing all of the attic insulation so
11:56they're rolling out a lot of new insulation for me okay sounds very exciting but just show me around
12:02yeah absolutely let's go up and check it out the mechanical heat recovery ventilation system that
12:08adam is getting installed is a system that brings fresh air into your home while recovering heat
12:13from the stale air it removes it works by passing outgoing warm air through a heat exchanger which
12:19transfers its heat to the incoming cool air without mixing the two this means you get fresh filtered air
12:28at a comfortable temperature reducing energy loss and improving indoor air quality all while keeping
12:34your heating bills lower one of the reasons i wanted kind of the heat recovery unit is because the house
12:41has been very damp in corners even with the windows open in the summer it doesn't move the air within
12:46the house so be very interesting to see that that's able to extract all that moisture and that
12:50condensation as well from the house to kind of keep it to not go moldy and i see you've also fitted your
12:56solar inverter yeah so the solar inverter and battery were placed in a few weeks ago they were connected
13:01up to the solar panels here on the rafters so that's the connection and you have a battery fitted as
13:07well yeah the system is a three and a half kilowatt solar system outside the five kilowatt battery and that
13:12battery i do actually have a direct connection to it so if there's ever an instance that i'm the power
13:18is cut in the house and i need to just run something off of a plug i should be able to pull directly
13:22from the battery as well and then anything extra is actually fed back into the grid the one stop shop
13:28helps set it up to get it fed back into electric ireland the other benefit of the batteries there's
13:33a setting on the system so you can have your night saver electricity fill the battery at night as well
13:37so you can actually put your reduced price electricity into the the battery at night kind of particularly
13:41in the winter when you wouldn't be generating as much power you know adam's ultimate goal is to someday
13:47get off the grid and become self-sufficient with his energy needs his dedication has me wondering
13:54about the steps your average household would need to take in order to get fully off the grid this
14:00curiosity leads me to county kilkenny to meet with mike wilkinson who is some way down the road towards
14:06his own energy independence i hear you've been living off the grid can you tell me a little bit about that
14:13that's right my wife and i have been living off-grid here for the last two years and it's been a dream
14:17of ours for the last five years and but realistically we've only been doing it for the last two but i
14:22think the best thing to do is to come and show you the the setup okay lead the way
14:29so the first thing you're seeing then i'm hearing obviously is the wind turbine these are known as
14:33micro turbines they generate ac electricity which is then sent into a control unit inside the shed there
14:40where it's converted into dc and stored into batteries and of course with the wind turbine you
14:44can generate electricity at night as well when you wouldn't be generating any electricity from your
14:49solar absolutely and not just at night even on days like today where it's quite gray and dull or in the
14:54depths of winter we can still have a source of power coming in that we can store and then use inside
14:59in the house and when it comes to solar panels what kind of an array have we got how many panels we're
15:03running 36 panels at the moment but they're all small ones because we bought at the wrong time
15:08unfortunately but we're due to upgrade that in the near future currently we're running 1.4 kilowatts
15:14from the ground mount array and 3.6 kilowatts from the rooftop array combined we get roughly 5 kilowatts
15:23i have never seen such an array of battery power in one room how did you go about designing a system
15:29like this there was a bit of trial and error involved technology is moving so fast in the industry
15:35that it's it's hard to keep up with what's the latest thing so we started off with campervan kind
15:40of stuff in mind we found out very quickly that that wasn't quite powerful enough to run a whole
15:45house so we were scaling that up and scaling that up until the point where we realized that no you
15:51have to go with domestic level stuff in order to live a modern lifestyle off-grid if someone was inspired
15:57by your story and was starting today what tips would you give okay um make friends with an electrician
16:04the first one a lot of this equipment can be bought individually and realistically you have to
16:10spend a good six to nine months learning about how to set it up so everything that's done here is
16:14always done from a safety point of view first because at the end of the day you're investing
16:18somewhere in the parish of 10 000 euros into this and if you do it right it'll last you 10 to 15 years
16:23minimum however a small mistake could cost everything in that living off the grid certainly has its
16:30challenges but with the right amount of solar wind and battery storage it's definitely achievable
16:36it takes planning patience and a willingness to adapt but the independence it offers makes it all
16:42worthwhile for anyone looking to make the switch start small and learn as you go
16:49back in blackpool county cork and the retrofit on adam o'brien's grandparents house
16:54which he purchased a couple of years ago is moving into its final stages all the work in the attic is
17:00done and today it's time for the installation of the heat pump and underfloor heating it's one of the
17:06biggest changes to the house to get the heat back into it i've been working for a couple of months to
17:11try and get the floor installation to an acceptable level so there's been a lot of communication with the
17:16retrofit company i was obviously concerned that they may come in and say oh no that's not right
17:20this is not right you should have done this so kind of um essentially a critique and then pushing
17:25back the project another few weeks but that doesn't seem to happen the floors are level the water pipes
17:30are in place and project manager john is doing a last review to ensure all is up to scratch
17:38let's check in here make sure that there's nice even centers on the pipe work that the lads have laid
17:43um everything looks good inside here as you can see they've reached all areas of the room there'll be
17:47no coal patches here once the job is up and running now your underfloor will be tested today and it will
17:53maintain pressure so we know that there's been no damage done to the pipe work before the screed is
17:57poured it's a big moment for this project everything has been installed and tested and it's time to pour
18:04the concrete so this seals everything on the floor and it becomes essentially a mass for the pipes to heat
18:11up it needs to be of a certain consistency or density to be effective across the house and then the screen
18:17is a self-leveling screed so it should come out to a nice level across the entire house and once the
18:22screen is dry inside it may take a few days to up to a week to cure and then i should be ready to kind
18:28of start designing and developing inside so this is very much the watershed the the kind of um end of
18:34the major stage of like a lot of the job diy construction development work and it's on to design next
18:42it's been almost a year since work began on this big retrofit project for adam o'brien near cork city
18:54insulation windows floors and heating have been fitted to bring this 1950s bungalow bang up to date
19:02i'm really looking forward to seeing the results
19:08i'm hoping adam's hit his target and today i'm making one final visit to see how the place looks
19:14now all the work has been completed well how's it going oh thanks good now how are you very good
19:19very good very good to come inside yeah let's go
19:21wow it's roasting in here yeah it's a definite change to what it was before we won't need the
19:31jacket no definitely not so how's everything going it's been going very well things have really come
19:37together in the last few months it's been a massive diy project so just kind of going room by room just
19:42to kind of finish it off get it to my comfort level it'll be kind of nice and warm and everything else in
19:47here well adam this room is completely transformed since i was last year and the one thing i'm really
19:53noticing is like there's busy traffic outside and i can hear very little of it yeah massive change from
19:58when the double glaze was in being able to kind of sit down and chill out in the sitting room nice and
20:03quiet just ignore kind of any weather or traffic outside has been amazing and i see you've refitted your
20:08precious stove yeah i had that installed previously just to try and get a bit more heat into the house
20:13prior to the energy upgrades but haven't necessarily needed it yet so haven't fired it up this season
20:18at all it does slightly impact your ber but a lot of people nowadays like to have the stove just so
20:24that they have that backup plan in case there was a power cut in this room i had a problem with the
20:31coal bridging here where the external insulation couldn't be put on it was just approximately about
20:37a meter meter and a half where the sort of gable end of my bungalow and the neighbor essentially have
20:42a gate there so they were very kind to allow the external insulation to come up all the way along
20:47the laneway that they have access to which is on their property line and so for this room i put in
20:51insulated boards here insulated plasterboard just to kind of cover that last little bit i did the
20:56entire wall to keep it uniform because i didn't want any like little notches or little bits of the
21:02wall coming out it doesn't take too much away from the room itself it still feels quite spacious so yeah
21:08it was a very easy decision to make the new insulation and on the floor heating ensure adam's
21:16home is cozy and warm today but i want to see just how warm it is compared to a year ago
21:22so let's have a look at your attic now you've all the insulation work done
21:27god there's a huge difference this is keeping your heat downstairs and of course the attic is now cold
21:32because you're keeping the heat downstairs none the heat is coming up into the attic yeah it's great to
21:36see all the the extra fluffy insulation up here really encapsulating that envelope throughout this
21:42renovation project adam has been aiming for a ber rating of b2 has he achieved this goal so all this
21:50work has been done to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of your home so the real question is
21:55where did your ber land yeah the br so when this whole project started the ber was an f so it was
22:01pretty pretty like at the bottom g obviously being the lowest and so it was reassessed recently so i'm
22:06happy to report that i have an a1 rating really that is amazing achievement well done well that's amazing
22:14that is superb yeah so it's really good to joe have that to kind of show off the level of work
22:19and the investment and time that i've put into the house my work here is done and dusted all that
22:27remains is for adam to throw his new hall door open and welcome family and friends to have their own
22:33tour of his transformed home he's had frustrated times and everything but he's still motivated in
22:44fairness through it all you know he's put a lot of love and blood sweat and tears into this so it's
22:48fantastic to finally see that it's all paid off hopefully he'll have many happy years in his
22:52cozy new home well adam to celebrate the lovely warm house you've welcomed us into today i brought around
22:58a little bit of champagne thought we might have a glass and uh and raise a toast
23:06if you marked my ceiling i think i've just added to the snag list kind of excited to see how the winter
23:13fares inside here two years ago when i was asked in here when it was all intact it was very cold
23:18wearing a hoodie the whole time trying to get the fire going not great but i'm hoping to kind of
23:22like sit on one of the couches look out onto dark sleety snowy weather and just be warm and comfortable
23:30inside and just that kind of cozy feeling thanks everyone for coming cheers cheers cheers well done
23:36this has been a long road for adam getting hands on and taking on any kind of renovation project yourself
23:41takes a lot of courage especially when you have all the technology of the deep retrofit to think of
23:46but now their cherished family home is safe and warm for generations to come
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