Our home is a 1970’s 4 bed in Monkton park (extended from 3-bed in the 90s) and we have been there since 2022 – we love our home and wanted to make it more sustainable!
The house has solar PV, a battery and a heat pump, as well as an electric car charger.
When we moved in it already had cavity wall insulation and loft insulation as well as solar PV (4kW) and a battery system (5kWh), which have been great to reduce our electricity bills (we are also on the feed-in-tarriff). The battery allows us to store the solar (and also grid electricity) and use it later.
We installed the heat pump and EV charger in 2024. The heat pump is a Daikin Altherma 3 8kW installed on the back wall of the house (not visible from inside). We didn’t need planning permission as it was just about far enough from our neighbours windows. It was installed by Octopus Energy (our energy supplier) and it took about a week for the team to complete all the work, which included fitting a 250 litre hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard and replacing some radiators. All of the work was included in a fixed price quote and we received £7,500 off through the government Boiler Upgrade Scheme, making the installation much more affordable (the survey and deposit were also refundable if we hadn’t gone ahead). As we have an induction hob, we could remove our gas connection entirely and no longer pay the standing charge. So far the heat pump has been working really well, keeping our home cosy. However, we learnt a lot through the preparation, installation and early operation so are happy to share these tips with others!
The EV charger is a Zappi and can be set to only use surplus solar PV so that our car charging is cheapest and greenest.
We used the free Chippenham thermal camera scheme to understand where our home was losing heat and make sure there weren’t any big issues.
We are a bit nerdy, so love to understand and optimise our energy use using Home Assistant and see what’s going. This allows us to use forecasts of the solar generation and energy prices to time our car or battery charging, saving us money on our bills – we are on the Octopus Agile energy tariff. We can control the heat pump, EV charging and battery charging through this and see our real time usage and costs.
Zappi EV Charger
Can use Solar diversion to charge your Electric Vehicle!
If you’d like to find out more and arrange a visit please visit the Green Open Homes website 9th – 17th November 2024 where homeowners in Chippenham and across Wiltshire offer in person visits or virtual visits by Whats App to find out how they’ve retrofitted their homes to save energy, reduce bills, and decarbonise.