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00:00I'm Ciaran McCarthy, and I've been working as a building engineer for nearly 30 years.
00:07I get asked all the time, how do I save money on energy costs?
00:12Well, retrofitting is all over the news lately, and in this series I'm travelling around Ireland
00:18checking out homes that are getting energy upgrades.
00:21That dark blue is the coldest.
00:23This is typically what I'd expect to see in an old house.
00:26With prices only going up and the planet under pressure, more and more people are saving money and energy in their homes by taking on the Retrofit Challenge.
00:36I'll be showing you what's actually doable and what kind of grants are out there to help.
00:41From heat pumps to HVAC, I'll break down the technical jargon and make sense of all the retrofit lingo so it's easy to follow.
00:48You're just bamboozled with all the decisions that need to be made.
00:51So, come with me as we retrofit Ireland and discover how you can reduce your energy costs.
00:59This is Heat My Home.
01:00Today, I'm on my way to meet 39-year-old software engineer Adam O'Brien, who is currently living at home with his parents in Balancholic in Cork.
01:15This temporary stay is pending on a major energy retrofit of his grandparents' house, which he bought from the family two years ago.
01:23It's a 1950s-era bungalow on the Commons Road in Cork.
01:28Adam hopes to bring this house up from an F to at least a B2 energy rating.
01:33And he is doing a lot of the work himself on the house, to which he has a strong emotional connection.
01:39My mother grew up in the house. They moved in sometime in the 60s.
01:43My grandfather had gotten a job across the road in the HGW factory, which then became the Dulux paint factory.
01:50The house was freezing.
01:52We all lived in the dining room and the kitchen.
01:54And, of course, then they got the gas.
01:57But my mother would have been delighted that Adam has it.
02:00And the fact that he's doing all this work now to make it such a habitable and warm, comfortable house.
02:07My initial fears going in to doing the work myself was, am I doing it correctly?
02:12Am I doing it the right way?
02:14Looking up YouTube videos, asking friends who've kind of done the same sort of thing,
02:18you kind of realise that any direction that you go will be the right one.
02:22There's no major mistakes.
02:24If anything does happen, it may take a bit more time and a bit more money, but you can go back from your mistakes.
02:28The initial dream was to get my own place, somewhere that I'm comfortable in.
02:33I came into the house with three priorities.
02:36I wanted the place fully rewired.
02:37I want a nice big kitchen.
02:39And I want it warm and dry.
02:40After 15 plus years of renting in different houses, I've done a couple of winters without central heating.
02:46I'm just kind of craving somewhere warm and dry.
02:52Climbing the steps up to Adam's house, I can see he's well underway with the clearing out.
02:56And I'm curious to get a rundown on his plan of action for this big project.
03:01I see you're up and running with some work already anyway.
03:03Yeah, just a little bit of debris outside.
03:06You've allotted the big thick old block walls and the breeze blocks.
03:10What's your plan on the outside from a kind of an insulation perspective?
03:13I'm going to go with the external insulation.
03:16So the entire house will be encased in hard insulation.
03:20It's the most expensive way to insulate your house, but it's a really good way because the dew point on the insulation is on the outer surface.
03:27So it just blows off in the wind.
03:29I'm dying to see how you're getting on inside.
03:31Will you show me your own?
03:32So this used to be the good room.
03:37This floor was suspended.
03:39So I've started filling in the sub-base floor with recycled materials from elsewhere in the house.
03:46The important thing here is you've got to watch cold bridging, that you're going to have edge insulation around the edges.
03:51So that the walls, which will be typically a bit colder, won't transmit any coldness.
03:55To help reduce heat loss, putting an insulating barrier between the wall and the floor around the edges is a simple way to reduce thermal bridging,
04:05which affects areas of a building where cold can be transferred more easily due to breaks in the insulation.
04:12I tell you, the windows don't look that old.
04:14Are you keeping these or are you upgrading them?
04:16They'll be upgraded to triple glazed.
04:18On top of having the triple glazed, which will dramatically reduce the noise outside,
04:22the air tightness membrane around the windows will help with air leakage.
04:26So a kind of a double benefit.
04:28Next up on the interior tour, I take a look at the attic and there are no surprises here.
04:33This is typically what I'd expect to see in an old house.
04:36Sometimes you wouldn't even have insulation, but you have an amount of insulation here already.
04:40It's the only insulation in the house.
04:42So this should be taken out and replaced with new insulation.
04:46One of the most important things in an old attic like this is, like you see here, that's old sarking felt, which has no breathability whatsoever.
04:55So when you've all your insulating and air tightness and everything done in the house,
04:58you need to make sure this area can still breathe because it will be cold and you can potentially get condensation on the underside of the sarking felt.
05:06So you need to make sure you have adequate ventilation.
05:08The attic can be the main culprit for heat loss in any house.
05:12So I'm going to carry out a quick test to check for any possible trouble spots.
05:17What I have here is a thermal imaging camera.
05:20What it does show you is it shows you where some of the cold spots.
05:23So areas that are basically sucking cold into your house, right?
05:26When you look at here now, you can see the insulation in between the joists.
05:30It's doing a little bit of work.
05:31It's not deep enough.
05:32But the biggest issue is that the timbers in between the insulation are actually cold bridging.
05:37You can see them as cold lines on the thermal imaging camera.
05:40So what you'll be doing here now, you'll be laying insulation between the joists and you'll also be laying insulation over the joists.
05:47The benefit of that is they're no longer bringing coldness back into your building.
05:52We're done with the interior for now and Adam takes me to the garden to reveal his plans for the roof.
05:57So out here, I'm hoping to place solar panels.
06:01This is south facing.
06:02So it's obviously the best place to put them.
06:04And so the plans have about eight panels.
06:09Adam's plan to install solar panels on the south facing roof is a fantastic idea and will be a good source of electricity for the house.
06:17Even in dull Irish winter weather, solar PV is viable as the panels generate power from light, not heat, and can still produce some electricity on a day with heavy cloud.
06:31After an in-depth viewing of the house, it's over to Adam's family home where we go through some of the costs involved.
06:39Although he's doing a lot of the initial works himself, Adam has decided to avail of the one-stop shop program for everything else.
06:45One of the advantages of going to the one-stop shop was that I wouldn't have to manage multiple contractors across multiple weeks, months, or even years.
06:56So this is a fantastic hub.
06:58Yeah, I mean, look, there is an awful lot to doing a deep retrofit.
07:01There's a lot of different contractors doing a lot of different things, and they all have to be staged.
07:06And there's a bit of working putting all the ground together.
07:08So I guess there's a bit of value in all the project management.
07:11Yeah, there is entirely, definitely.
07:12So the total cost of all the works before the grants is a whopping 83,427 euros.
07:21And of course, the total cost of retrofit works after grants is 48,867.
07:28It's still a very large sum of money, but this is a single payment.
07:32And I suppose you're looking at the lifetime of your home as a long-term investment and many years of living in a very comfortable home.
07:39And of course, dramatically reduced energy bills.
07:41Yeah, and I think it's somewhere that my parents and my mother can come over, or my aunts and uncles and cousins, and still get the feel that it's still in the family, but now it's something new and exciting.
07:52All right, thank you very much.
07:55We'll see you again soon.
07:56Thanks very much, Ciarán.
07:57You've a lot of work to do.
07:58I definitely do.
07:59Nice to look.
08:00Take care.
08:00Thanks very much.
08:02So we've spoken about some very big figures there, and this is after Adam doing a lot of the demolition work himself.
08:08He still has a load more to do, and I'm looking forward to coming 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 hopped by to check on progress for the first big-ticket item of this retrofit project, the new windows.
08:30I'm feeling excited about it, because it is obviously the first step.
08:34It's something I've been kind of waiting for.
08:36It's the first big job to getting it warm, getting it dry, getting it a bit quieter as well, because of the main road.
08:42I understand that my grandmother kind of got used to it over the years.
08:45Also, for some of the windows that are being put in, they're essentially smaller panes for less vibration.
08:50It's not the end of the line for the old windows, as Adam has a plan for them.
08:55The windows that were taken out, they had to cut the frames to take them out properly.
08:59The initial idea was that the quickest thing is to kind of just break the windows themselves and just take everything out.
09:04But my brother down in West Cork was hoping to get the windows to be able to recycle them into a greenhouse.
09:09So it's another aspect where the windows will be recycled.
09:13The windows are in, and the next job to be tackled is the external insulation, which consists of slabs of rigid insulation covering the entire outside of the house.
09:22The guys are putting it together, and it provides, obviously, a greater layer of insulation,
09:27a greater layer of keeping the heat in to the house.
09:30The guys start with kind of a white plinth at the bottom, and then kind of build up with this kind of rougher insulation material that can take on a bit of plaster.
09:38The guys only started this morning, so this has only been a few hours.
09:41The only difficulty for them, really, is just being able to cut around windows and everything else.
09:45Say, the gable wall doesn't have any windows, so that will just be plonk, plonk, plonk straight away.
09:50The work continues at a blistering pace, but lead contractor Jamie has spotted a problem that could slow things down.
09:58This being your neighbour's alleyway, they've been kind enough to allow us to do this wall,
10:03but at the very end of the wall there, that gate would need to be removed.
10:07Right.
10:07And then attach it to their wall, so we can insulate that part.
10:11Alternatively, we can go all the way down to the end of this laneway.
10:14The little bit at the corner, the workaround will be, we can do internal insulation on that room there, on the wall facing out, if you get me.
10:22Okay, I'd have to assess.
10:23Like, for the internal, what would that look like?
10:26The gable end wall comes as far as this line here.
10:30So the gate is attached to the other side of this wall.
10:33So if your neighbours don't allow you to move that gate, we can't externally insulate this section of the wall.
10:39Now, the workaround would be, this whole wall here gets an internal slabbing.
10:45I have to think about it.
10:47I don't want to annoy the neighbours.
10:48Sure, I get it.
10:49More than I have to.
10:50Yeah, yeah.
10:51And so it does, again, kind of more doubly insulate this room as well.
10:55This has always been the wettest one.
10:56You can kind of see remnants of mould and everything in this corner.
10:59Sure.
10:59So I'll just have to assess it, because it's just a small other job.
11:03For myself to get done.
11:04But, yeah.
11:09Today, I'm on my way to catch up with Adam O'Brien from Cork, who's carrying out a deep retrofit on his grandparents' house, which he purchased a couple of years ago.
11:19Since I last visited Adam, he has done an amount of work on the property.
11:23Both the windows and external wrap have been installed, and the solar panels, which will supply a good portion of his electricity for the house, have been fitted on the roof.
11:34But there's still lots to be done, and Adam's place is a hive of activity.
11:41Hello.
11:41Adam.
11:42Ciarán.
11:42I'm seeing loads of vans outside today.
11:44What's happening?
11:45So the ventilation system is being finalised, put in, the second fixing, as it's called.
11:51The conduits were put in previously for it, and the ducting for all the air.
11:55So now they're popping it in and checking it out.
11:57And then while they're up there in the attic, they're finalising all of the attic insulation.
12:01So they're rolling out a lot of new insulation for me.
12:04OK, sounds very exciting.
12:06Why don't you show me around?
12:07Yeah, absolutely.
12:07Let's go up and check it out.
12:08I'll follow you there.
12:10The mechanical heat recovery ventilation system that Adam is getting installed is a system that brings fresh air into your home while recovering heat from the stale air it removes.
12:20It works by passing outgoing warm air through a heat exchanger, which transfers its heat to the incoming cool air without mixing the two.
12:29This means you get fresh, filtered air at a comfortable temperature, reducing energy loss and improving indoor air quality, all while keeping your heating bills lower.
12:43One of the reasons I wanted kind of a heat recovery unit is because the house has been very damp in corners.
12:48Even with the windows open in the summer, it doesn't move the air within the house.
12:51So it'll be very interesting to see that that's able to extract all the moisture and that condensation as well from the house to kind of keep it, you know, not go mouldy.
12:59And I see you've also fitted your solar inverter.
13:02Yeah, so the solar inverter and battery were placed in a few weeks ago.
13:06They were connected up to the solar panels here on the rafters.
13:09So that's the connection.
13:11And you have a battery fitted as well?
13:12Yeah, the system is a three and a half kilowatt solar system outside, the five kilowatt battery.
13:17And that battery, I do actually have a direct connection to it.
13:20So if there's ever an instance that I'm, you know, the power is cut in the house and I need to just run something off of a plug, I should be able to pull directly from the battery as well.
13:29And then anything extra is actually fed back into the grid.
13:32The one-stop shop helps set it up to get it fed back into Electric Ireland.
13:36The other benefit of the battery is there's a setting on the system so you can have your night saver electricity fill the battery at night as well.
13:42So you can actually put your reduced price electricity into the battery at night, kind of particularly in the winter when you wouldn't be generating as much power, you know.
13:50Adam's ultimate goal is to someday get off the grid and become self-sufficient with his energy needs.
13:57His dedication has me wondering about the steps your average household would need to take in order to get fully off the grid.
14:05This curiosity leads me to County Kilkenny to meet with Mike Wilkinson, who is some way down the road towards his own energy independence.
14:13I hear you've been living off the grid. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
14:18That's right. My wife and I have been living off grid here for the last two years and it's been a dream of ours for the last five years.
14:24But realistically, we've only been doing it for the last two. But I think the best thing to do is to come and show you the setup.
14:31OK, lead the way.
14:31So the first thing you're seeing then and hearing obviously is the wind turbine. These are known as microturbines.
14:39They generate AC electricity, which is then sent into a control unit inside the shed there, where it's converted into DC and stored into batteries.
14:48And of course, with the wind turbine, you can generate electricity at night as well when you wouldn't be generating any electricity from your solar.
14:54Absolutely. And not just at night, even on days like today, where it's quite grey and dull or in the depths of winter, we can still have a source of power coming in that we can store and then use inside the house.
15:05And when it comes to solar panels, what kind of an array have we got? How many panels?
15:08We're running 36 panels at the moment, but they're all small ones because we bought at the wrong time, unfortunately.
15:15But we're due to upgrade that in the near future.
15:16Currently, we're running 1.4 kilowatts from the ground mount array and 3.6 kilowatts from the rooftop array. Combined, we get roughly 5 kilowatts.
15:28I have never seen such an array of battery power in one room. How did you go about designing a system like this?
15:35There was a bit of trial and error involved. Technology is moving so fast in the industry that it's hard to keep up with what's the latest thing.
15:42So we started off with camper van kind of stuff in mind. We found out very quickly that that wasn't quite powerful enough to run a whole house.
15:50So we were scaling that up and scaling that up until the point where we realised that, no, you have to go with domestic level stuff in order to live a modern lifestyle off grid.
16:00If someone was inspired by your story and was starting today, what tips would you give?
16:05OK, make friends with an electrician, be the first one. A lot of this equipment can be bought individually.
16:13And realistically, you have to spend a good six to nine months learning about how to set it up.
16:18So everything that's done here is always done from a safety point of view first.
16:22Because at the end of the day, you're investing somewhere in the parish of €10,000 into this.
16:26And if you do it right, it'll last you 10 to 15 years minimum.
16:29However, a small mistake could cost everything in that.
16:32Living off the grid certainly has its challenges, but with the right amount of solar, wind and battery storage, it's definitely achievable.
16:41It takes planning, patience and a willingness to adapt.
16:45But the independence it offers makes it all worthwhile.
16:48For anyone looking to make the switch, start small and learn as you go.
16:53Back in Blackpool, County Cork, and the retrofit on Adam O'Brien's grandparents' house, which he purchased a couple of years ago, is moving into its final stages.
17:04All the work in the attic is done.
17:06And today, it's time for the installation of the heat pump and underfloor heating.
17:10It's one of the biggest changes to the house to get the heat back into it.
17:14I've been working for a couple of months to try and get the floor installation to an acceptable level.
17:19So there's been a lot of communication with the retrofit company.
17:22I was obviously concerned that they may come in and say, oh no, that's not right.
17:25This is not right. You should have done this.
17:27So kind of essentially critique and then pushing back the project another few weeks.
17:31But that doesn't seem to have happened.
17:33The floors are level, the water pipes are in place, and project manager John is doing a last review to ensure all is up to scratch.
17:41Let's check in here to make sure there's nice, even centres on the pipework that the lads have laid.
17:49Everything looks good inside here.
17:50As you can see, they've reached all areas of the room.
17:52There'll be no coal patches here once the job is up and running.
17:55Now, your underfloor will be tested today, and it will maintain pressure.
17:59So we know that there's been no damage done to the pipework before the screed is poured.
18:03It's a big moment for this project.
18:06Everything has been installed and tested, and it's time to pour the concrete.
18:10So this seals everything on the floor, and it becomes essentially a mass.
18:15For the pipes to heat up, it needs to be of a certain consistency or density to be effective across the house.
18:21And then the screed is a self-leveling screed, so it should come out to a nice level across the entire house.
18:27And once the screed is dry inside, it may take a few days to up to a week to cure,
18:31and then I should be ready to kind of start designing and developing inside.
18:35So this is very much the watershed, the kind of end of the major stage of a lot of the DIY construction development work.
18:45And it's on to design next.
18:47It's been almost a year since work began on this big retrofit project for Adam O'Brien near Cork City.
18:59Insulation, windows, floors, and heating have been fitted to bring this 1950s bungalow bang up to date.
19:06I'm really looking forward to seeing the results.
19:13I'm hoping Adam's hit his target, and today I'm making one final visit to see how the place looks now all the work has been completed.
19:21How's it going?
19:22Thanks.
19:23Good now, how are you?
19:24Very good, very good, very good.
19:25Do you want to come inside and have a look?
19:26Yeah, let's go.
19:26Wow, it's roasting in here.
19:34Yeah, it's a definite change to what it was before.
19:36We won't need the jacket.
19:37No, definitely not.
19:38So how's everything been going?
19:40It's been going very well.
19:41Things have really come together in the last few months.
19:43It's been a massive DIY project.
19:45So just kind of going room by room just to kind of finish it off, get it to my comfort level,
19:50to be kind of nice and warm and everything else in here.
19:52Well, Adam, this room is completely transformed since I was last here,
19:57and the one thing I'm really noticing is, like, there's busy traffic outside, and I can hear very little of it.
20:02Yeah, massive change from when the double glaze was in.
20:04Being able to kind of sit down and chill out in the sitting room, nice and quiet,
20:08just ignore kind of any weather or traffic outside has been amazing.
20:12And I see you've refitted your precious stove.
20:14Yeah, I had that installed previously just to try and get a bit more heat into the house prior to the energy upgrades,
20:19but haven't necessarily needed it yet, so haven't fired it up this season at all.
20:24It does slightly impact your BER, but a lot of people nowadays like to have the stove
20:29just so that they have that backup plan in case there was a power cut.
20:34In this room, I had a problem with cold bridging here, where the external insulation couldn't be put on.
20:40It was just approximately about a metre, metre and a half, where the sort of gable end of my bungalow
20:45and the neighbours essentially have a gate there, so they were very kind to allow the external insulation
20:50to come up all the way along the laneway that they have access to, which is on their property line.
20:55So for this room, I put in insulated boards here, insulated plasterboard, just to kind of cover that last little bit.
21:01I did the entire wall to keep it uniform, because I didn't want any, like, little notches or little bits of the wall coming out.
21:07It doesn't take too much away from the room itself, it still feels quite spacious, so yeah, it was a very easy decision to make.
21:17The new insulation and on-the-floor heating ensure Adam's home is cosy and warm today,
21:23but I want to see just how warm it is compared to a year ago.
21:26So let's have a look at your attic, now that you've all the insulation work done.
21:32God, there's a huge difference.
21:33This is keeping your heat downstairs, and of course the attic is now cold,
21:37because you're keeping the heat downstairs, none of the heat is coming up into the attic.
21:41Yeah, it's great to see all the extra fluffy insulation up here, really encapsulating that envelope.
21:47Throughout this renovation project, Adam has been aiming for a BER rating of B2.
21:53Has he achieved this goal?
21:54So all this work has been done to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of your home,
21:59so the real question is, where did your BER land?
22:01Yeah, the BER, so when this whole project started, the BER was an F,
22:06so it was pretty, pretty, like, at the bottom, G obviously being the lowest,
22:09and so it was reassessed recently, so I'm happy to report that I have an A1 rating.
22:16Really, that is an amazing achievement.
22:18Thanks very much.
22:18Well done, well, that's amazing, that is superb, yeah.
22:21So it's really good to have that, to kind of show off the level of work and the investment in time that I've put into the house.
22:27My work here is done and dusted.
22:32All that remains is for Adam to throw his new hall door open
22:35and welcome family and friends to have their own tour of his transformed home.
22:41That's a change to what it was.
22:43It's what it was originally learned.
22:44He's had frustrating times and everything, but he's still motivated and fairness through it all, do you know?
22:50He's put a lot of love and blood, sweat and tears into this, so it's fantastic to finally see that it's all paid off.
22:55Hopefully he'll have many happy years in his cosy new home.
22:58Well, Adam, to celebrate the lovely, warm house you've welcomed us into today,
23:02I brought around a little bit of champagne, thought we might have a glass and raise a toast.
23:06Whee!
23:10If you marked my ceiling.
23:13I think I'll just add it to the snag list.
23:16Kind of excited to see how the winter fares inside here.
23:19Two years ago when I was last in here when it was all intact, it was very cold,
23:23wearing a hoodie the whole time, trying to get the fire going.
23:25Not great, but I'm hoping to kind of like sit on one of the couches,
23:29look out onto dark, sleety, snowy weather,
23:32and just be warm and comfortable inside, and just that kind of cosy feeling.
23:37Thanks everyone for coming. Cheers!
23:39Cheers!
23:40Cheers, well done.
23:41This has been a long road for Adam.
23:43Getting hands on and taking on any kind of renovation project yourself takes a lot of courage,
23:47especially when you have all the technology of the deep retrofit to think of.
23:51But now their cherished family home is safe and warm for generations to come.
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