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Make Your House Smile by adding value with Energy Saving Improvements

Get More Money For Your House By Installing Energy Efficient Improvements

If you make Energy Saving improvements on your home you can increase the sale price by around 14%. This is the average figure you can expect to make, but it can be as high as 38 per cent in some parts of England. This is news released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) following their latest survey results.

The report was released following scrutiny of 300,000 property sales in England between 1995 and 2011, a mammoth task which makes it the most comprehensive study of its kind to date.

If the owner of an average English home carries out work which improves the EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) from band G to E, or from band D to B it could mean an additional value of £16,000. In the North West this type of Home Improvement could see an additional £23,000 added to its value. Presumably because it is colder up north so the savings are greater!

Asked to comment on the findings Broadcaster Kevin McCloud said:

“There are some 26 million homes in Britain, most of them about as well insulated as a rabbit hutch, and they need immediate help to be made less wasteful. This timely report tells us what we suspected all along: that people really value the well-insulated, energy-efficient home; that modest investment in measures to make our homes more comfortable, healthier and cheaper-to-run really pays off.

The Green Deal is now maturing into a helpful way of financing a lot of the retrofit solutions around. Homeowners can now start to make these changes, alleviate the burden of high energy bills and improve the value of their prime asset.”
Kevin McCloud broadcaster and co-founder of the Grand Designs Future Living home retrofit company

If you want to find out more about which Green Deal works are most suitable for your home you can visit the BeEnergySmart website, where you will find a handy calculator to find out which Energy Saving Home Improvements will be best for your home.

Find out more about Insulation in DIY Doctors Loft Insulation Project or a guide on pumping cavity Wall insulation and whether it is suitable for your home.

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The Storefloor loft boarding system allows more insulation material to be fitted under loft boards

Get a suspended loft floor and buy more insulation to save on fuel consumption this year

This is the third in our series of reports on this year’s Grand Designs Live. You can read more in the series like what DIY Doctor thought of Tree Tents and our report on clay plaster at the show. While I was at the exhibition I was looking for the unusual, the stylish, and the innovative.

This product by Loftzone comes in the last category, and is unashamedly useful. In fact you could say this system just floored me!

The Storefloor is a system of loft flooring that uses the strength of the existing roof joists to take a flooring ‘bracket’ that you can load with loft boards. The Storefloor system spreads the load of the boards, and whatever is on top of them, while also allowing enough space underneath it to let you add the recommended amount of insulation, with an all-important air gap to ensure the insulating properties of the insulating material are most effective.

Dave Raval from Loftzone explained about the height of the flooring system: “It is sized to allow up to 300mm of insulation . . . plus an air gap above the insulation and below the boards. We asked the Buildings Research Establishment to advise us on the size of this gap, which helps to reduce any possible moisture build-up on the underside of the boards.”

The system is formed of sectional pieces that use the structure of the existing roof joists to builds a structurally sound floating or suspended floor that can be used for storage and occasional access, and can be strengthened if you want to walk on it regularly, or to allow you to store heavier items.

Compressed loft insulation material is only half as effective

What many people don’t realise is that if they squash the minimum recommended fibreglass wool insulation, it becomes less than half as effective as it would be with enough space for it to sit unmolested by loft boards. You know how it is, you need space to store Christmas decorations, old school books and your scuba diving kit, so you place loft boards on top of your insulation so then it is compressed down to the height of the joists and it has no air void between it and the loft boards.

When you consider that fibreglass insulation is one of the best loft insulation materials, in that it gives you the best energy saving returns pound for pound, plus the fact that nearly all of us have items stashed in our loft (whether it is properly boarded out or not), then it makes absolute sense to have this system.

Having effective loft insulation makes economic sense

We are all becoming increasingly aware of the costs of energy bills and the savings to be made by improving insulation in our homes. Energy ratings or EPC’s are now mandatory for any property that is marketed for rent or for sale, and so it is likely that systems like this will be taken up to satisfy the need for increased loft insulation while allowing us the convenience of having our loft boarded for storage.

It wouldn’t surprise us to find this system being fitted into new build properties by companies for whom eco building is of paramount importance.

However even if it isn’t already in the loft of the house you buy it would a such a simple job to retrofit, using simple basic DIY skills. The system is modular so you can even fit it without clearing your loft first. To read more about the Loftzone Storefloor system check out their website – and I know we are raving about it but I can assure you no money changed hands for the making of this post.

If it’s good it’s good…

The StoreFloor, raised platform loft storage system, fits to the ceiling joists to suspend the floor well above the insulation

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With news that the UK shale gas projects may not actually lower energy prices, it is time to start working out just what we can do to make our homes more efficient this summer in preparation for the winter of 2013.

Despite the fact that US gas prices are currently at the lowest in the world after their investment in shale gas, UK projects are currently struggling to find both funding and resources.

But what can homeowners do to make their home more comfortable while keeping their bills low?

Invest in technology

Though the idea of investing in technology may seem a little silly, the truth is that bringing new technologies into your home can help you save money in the long run.

LED lights, available from LED lighting retailers for example, though more expensive than incandescent light bulbs, offer homeowners far more life (lasting up to 10,000 hours) at a much lower price throughout. Check out LED lighting calculators to see exactly what you can save.

Other than LED lights of course, you can even save money on energy efficient televisions. A big screen television for example can really rack up an electricity bill, which can cost you anything from £4 right up to £83 per year.

If you’re planning on buying a television this summer, check out sust-it.net for a comparison of the best energy efficient televisions on the market.

See what you can recycle

Though over the past thirty years, recycling has been at the heart of everything green, there are a few new techniques to recycling that you might not be aware of.

Websites such as freecycle offer people great opportunities for giving away and receiving goods totally free of charge instead of throwing unwanted items away. Simply go on the website and find a group near you to see just what is out there.

Even outside the house and in the garden, you are able to walk into a whole field of opportunity.

These days, with a modified lawnmower, you are able to turn your grass cuttings into mulch; therein returning all the nutrients back into the soil and the remaining grass.

Grey water is also a uniquely brilliant and almost free (bearing in mind the purchase of a water drum), way of preserving water for the use of your garden. In fact, in countries such as Germany, it is actually a widely used technique to use grey water to clean things such as cars.

Check out the Green Deal

One of the greatest government schemes to have been enacted over the past year, the Green Deal is a great way of helping people afford energy efficient technologies for their homes.

Whether they need insulation for the loft, or even solar panels, people can now lend through the green deal, an amount of money to cover the costs of buying and installing these technologies.

The great thing about it is the fact that the money is paid back through the electricity bills, and if the technology won’t lower those bills, the house will not qualify for the deal; so the loan will always benefit the person investing.

To add to this, the loan stays with the home and not the person, meaning that if you were to move away, the debt stays with the house as the next people to move in shall also benefit from the improvements that you have made.

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The Department for Energy and Climate Change have announced figures for the take-up of the Green Deal for February 2013

After a very slow start in January 2013 the Green Deal seems to have finally hit the public consciousness, and people are now booking assessments to see if it is worth them carrying out energy-saving works to their homes.

According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), nearly two thousand property assessments were carried out by the end of February this year. There was also an increase in contractors registering to carry out works under the Green Deal. There are now forty firms registered as providers, and 629 installers who have been approved for the scheme.

Key points Released by the DECC
(to the end of February 2013)

1,803 GD Assessments had been lodged (Chart 1 – see below)

77 GD Assessor Organisations and the 619 GD advisors they employ had been accredited

£26.9 million worth of contracts had been let through the ECO brokerage system

Chart 1 – Number of GD Assessments lodged, by month

If you want to find out more about what the Green Deal is, or how to get a free Energy Assessment on your home please go to our Green Living Section for more information.

Click here to go to our Green Living Section for Energy Assessments, Green Energy Options, and an explanation of the Green Deal.

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We are happy to announce the winner of the Roberts Solar DAB radio

The Great Green Climate Challenge was started during Climate week, last week. We are really pleased to have received 23 pledges from companies and individuals to save a total of around 1,476 kilograms of Carbon Dioxide.

Hopefully the changes our pledgers made will encourage them to keep making these energy saving measures through the rest of the year.
You may remember that as an encouragement to make a pledge during Climate Week we offered our readers a chance to win a Solar-powered Radio.

‘And the winner is …’

Congratulations to Aoife who pledged to Veg Out – avoiding eating meat for two months form the date of her pledge. Her individual contribution could save as much as 55kg of Carbon Dioxide. Her name was pulled out of the hat by Charlotte from Be Energy Smart and her prize is already winging its way to her, courtesy of Green Reviews.
Green Reviews is a website specialising in reviewing Green products, you may want to check out what they recommend if you are thinking of making a new purchase and want to make it a greener one.

It has been great swapping stories with our partners in this Great Green Climate Challenge, which was set up for us by Charlotte from Be Energy Smart. You might want to check out the Be Energy Smart blog for news from her on how she is getting on with her own energy-saving pledges, or you can take advantage of their Free online Energy Assesment Tool, if you are thinking of carrying out some energy saving home improvements.

If you decide you want to make energy saving changes to your house then why not read our project on how to fit loft insulation. Did you know that all our projects also have a list of related projects? They are listed in a box in the left-hand column, with quick links to each page. Hopefully this helps you to read all the useful information you need when researching home improvement jobs.

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