Green Giant - Federation of Master Builders
The Energy Saving Trust calculates that the average household could save up to £250 per year on their fuel bills by making simple energy saving improvements to their home. Plus when you come to sell your home it can make it more attractive to potential buyers as they will save money on their energy bills.
Making your home energy efficient doesn’t have to cost more or look weird. Russell Smith of Parity Projects, an FMB member, explained how his company renovated an average Victorian house into a modern eco-house. “When we started our demonstration project we deliberately acquired a house which would be difficult to eco-renovate up to eco-excellent standards; it is a period property, which had no cavity walls, was in need of renovation throughout and has no south facing roofs, thereby making the harvesting of solar energy much more difficult. But we also wanted it to be a contemporary home, which didn’t look remarkable from the outside. In fact if you walk down the street you probably wouldn’t think it was any different to any of the others.”
The cost doesn’t have to be prohibitive either, in fact if environmentally friendly changes are carried out at the same time as other improvement works it can add relatively little, Russell said
“We did all the works as if it was a house that was being lived in and could not just be totally gutted; we did one room at a time and we took the attitude as if a homeowner wanted to add a loft conversion what little extras could we add to make it more energy efficient? This way we kept costs to a minimum and it shows clients that things can be done little by little but through careful planning and some enterprising we have been able to significantly reduce the energy consumption of the house and clearly if we can do it here we can do it anywhere!”
Russell continued “As well as the conventional renovation such as re-wiring, addition of a loft room, new windows and redecoration we have also incorporated beyond best-practice insulation, hyper-efficient heating system using renewable fuels, rainwater recycling and improved waste management facilities. The energy consumption has gone down by 72% which is obviously a huge saving annually.”
The FMB has been running its “Building a Greener Britain” campaign to illustrate to the Government how important it is that homeowners consider making their homes more energy efficient. Brian Berry, Director of External Affairs at the FMB said, “Our homes produce 27 percent of the UK’s total carbon emissions. The Government has a legal commitment to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 and although it has a strategy for new homes it needs to go further because 85 percent of existing homes will still be standing in 2050. We want the Government to build on its Green Deal retrofit initiative, which will be launched in October 2012, by offering a range of additional incentives to help encourage homeowners to make their homes more energy efficient. One way this could be done is to cut the rate of VAT to five percent for energy efficient improvements.”
Check out FMB’s Top five tips to make your home more energy efficient .
