After a life at sea driving cruise ships, Jesse Bryce now works in energy efficiency in the cargo industry. He shares how he made his ex-council Luton home zero carbon for £4,200.
Decarbonising my home started not from what I should do, but from what I could do. By taking one step at a time, the gas supply has now been disconnected and capped off.
When I bought my house I had simple gas hobs. A nightmare to clean, and of course the windows fogged up every time I used them. That moisture on the windows indicated more moisture in the air – making it harder to heat the house too!
With a supply already wired to my kitchen, an electric induction hob was an easy choice, and a Bosch 4 ‘burner’ cost me £400 installed. It heats up faster, the kitchen stays cooler in summer and the only steam is from the food – not all the gas being burned. Better for cooking, easier to clean, and better indoor air quality too!
One of the most talked about aspects of decarbonising homes is our heating. The standard approach in the UK is to plumb an air-to-water heat pump into our radiators, circulating warm water as we’ve done for decades. To work well, it needs a well designed system to ensure the heat pump, the radiators and the pipes that connect them all meet the needs of our homes. Even with all that done right, for a smaller home like mine even a small 5 kW heat pump is still too large!
I was raised in New Zealand, where gas grids aren’t as common as here in the UK. Kiwis moved to adopt air-to-air heat pumps, often known as air con units! These are simple, cheap, quick to install units that are often more efficient at heating than their air-to-water counterparts.
For £2,000 installed, a single 3.5 kW Mitsubishi air con unit in my living room pushes more than enough heat through my home, ticking over low and slow to maintain temperatures. Most of the time I don’t notice it’s on, though when we hit minus seven outside the warm bubble around my couch was nice!
Because it’s pushing warm air into the area, I find it’s better at keeping my living room comfortable than my radiators ever were – all their heat seemed to disappear straight upstairs. And an extra bonus, no more creaking radiator pipes waking me up!
Having sorted my heating, it left my gas combi boiler only producing hot water. The step to take the boiler out was a bigger one – it meant I couldn’t use my radiators even if I wanted to. With the heat pump handling last winter’s cold spell so well, I had the confidence I needed to make that leap.
A basic hot water cylinder with a smart immersion switch gave me the best balance of cost and capability, at £1,800 installed. Being able to set a schedule on the immersion makes the most of cheap off-peak power overnight.
These three steps with a total cost of £4,200 meant I could have my gas meter removed – no more standing charges! And with smart meters and their off-peak tariffs giving running costs similar to (or less than) running on gas this last winter, going fossil free makes sense for bills too.
Living in an ex-council house, there are likely hundreds of homes in the area with similar heating needs and available space to repeat these steps. Some may still have a hot water cylinder, making it an even easier change!
Unfortunately there’s no help to make these changes at the moment. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme heat pump grant of £5,000 can’t be used for air-to-air heat pumps, even though that amount could enable hundreds (thousands?) of smaller homes just like mine to go fossil free – for free!
Seeing work in my local area to replace aging gas pipes, should we be digging up our streets again? Or perhaps helping get homes off gas is a better use of our money.
I’ve been lucky to be in a position to take these steps over the last few years, especially with the current cost of living. Hopefully by showing some of what we could do with our smaller homes, it can spark ideas for those wondering what steps they can take when they’re able to.
Zero Carbon Luton 