Transcript for ‘Semi-detached’ video

Richard McPhail: I’m here in East London in a 1950s semi-detached four-bedroomed home. We’ve done an assessment and I’m here with the householders to go through the report, and see how we can start to implement the improvement measures.

The purpose of going through this report with you is so that you can understand the energy efficiency of your house and the environmental impact that it’s having. But more importantly than that, we’re going to do a tailored action plan for you.

So here’s the main page of the report and this is the energy performance certificate. You can see here we’ve got two scales (A-G), and your house starts on this scale which is the energy rating of 51 E and if we implement the measures that we’re recommending, you’ll get to 73, which is a C.

…That’s a fantastic improvement.

So here’s the main list of the recommendations. Initially, the best thing to do would be to top up the loft insulation and cavity wall insulation. As you can see, that’s a very powerful measure, then more insulation on your hot water cylinder and more low energy light bulbs.

Longer-term would be firstly to replace your boiler. I know your boiler’s quite a few years old now so the option is to get a modern, high-rate, band A rated condensing boiler.

The other thing we did as part of the assessment is to conduct an air permeability test or air tightness test. We got a result which is a representation basically of the volume of air moving through the house. Typically you get a figure in a house of this age and type of about 15 to 20 and yours is 18.7. A brand new house built today has to be less than 10.

The third part of our assessment is the thermographic survey where we used a special camera to take pictures of the house around the outside. Essentially, the lighter the colour, the more heat loss there is. The effect of the measures that we’ve discussed will be to considerably darken these.

So what I’m going to do now is to take the results of everything we’ve discussed back to our research team at Green Homes, and they will come up with a specific tailored action plan. Obviously this being your family home, it’s going to take a while to get the measures implemented, but we’re here to support you for the whole of the next year.

If there’s anything else that you need in terms of liaising with suppliers please feel free to get in touch and we’ll give you whatever you require.

…Thank you very much Richard.