ECO4 retrofit part 1

I promised to write this up so here is part one.

If like me you live in an old stone cottage with no mains gas, or water you might receive many flyers and online ads to apply for the ECO4 scheme. ECO being a clever clever acronym for Energy Company Obligation - your electric company pays, not the government. I heard from some friends who had done it, and it did deliver on the promise - for free.

I wasn’t jumping on it though, as the scheme was rightly targeted at low income, benefit receiving households - that’s not us.

But there was a route, called ECO Flex, that covered a small range of medical conditions to qualify. Which ones?

  • Cardiovascular conditions
  • Respiratory disease
  • Limited mobility
  • Immunosuppression

Ok, that’s me. Despite being pretty well at the moment, I did actually qualify with my various cardiac conditions.

OK, how? And who, to do it? The county council had a webpage with suppliers they vouched for, so I looked at the Trustpilot reviews for all of them, and picked a very local firm who had top scores - Stellar Enegy of Llanelli - to see if it was possible.

One brief chat later, yes it was, and by the sound of it we’d be able to get the maximum package. What’s the maximum package you ask? Here we go…

Insulation

The internal faces of external walls, ceilings where upstairs is mostly in the roof as is our case. The flat part of the ceiling is less than 1m in parts, the newer section a little wider (but insulated to 2008 spec).

Before / During

Now, in looking at this over the years, it’s clearly problematic in old stone walled buildings. The latest spec for this is one product of breathable glass wool batts, engineered foam/osb stud wall, and an “intelligent” open vapour membrane. This is the specific product SWIP IWI

Then boarded and plaster skimmed. Sad to see the bumpy stone walls gone but, in theory, reversible on a house-lifespan timescale (it’s about 200 years old).

During / After

Ventilation

From earlier schemes, the risks of moisture and condensation are high. So much so, they won’t internally insulate the bathroom or kitchen - and they put in dynamic constant humidity-detecting extractors here. Elsewhere they added trickle vents to the window frames. It was all done the first day, and a lot more discretely than I imagined.

Heating

Now, the previous owners did some things around 2005-2008 to this house which were good (upstairs partial extension, lovely wood-fired range) but also bad. Removing an oil fired boiler and ALL radiators I think in hindsight of living here a bad thing.

We are due to get radiators returning to all the rooms, sized as big as feasible to fit the spaces.

Powering them will be an air source heat pump. I’ll update this post with more details when we get there.

Hot water tank

Ours is old and far too small, so out it goes. Some reorg of the airing cupboard to follow. One downside is that currently the wood fired range can (eventually) heat the hot water, but am informed that’s not going to be integrated with the new one. It will continue to heat the bathroom rad so that’s good I guess. Still. A shame, limitation of the size/position/type of cylinder apparently. No, I’m not convinced.

Solar

We’ll also be getting solar PV panels on the SW facing roof, more details after next week I guess.

Battery

I mean, this is an optional paid extra, but I think kind of essential to make the most of all of the rest. We’ve asked for the largest appropriate, and will update with all the details when we discover them.

How it happens

So that’s the package. We sent off initial applications to a couple of companies in early October. We had an initial surveyor round by mid October part of which was a new EPC score - ours from purchase had expired - and woohoo, a low G! Amazing/ terrible!

Following that, a vague timeframe of March 2025 was given. No worries, so we wait … but, drama!

We slide into the new year. Unexpected phone call on Monday 6th, ”We’re starting tomorrow, yes?” Some people dropped out. Oh shit.

Move everything, pack up everything, boxes and boxes of books and things moved, furniture piled into the centre of rooms, overflowing wardrobes vacuum packed. The whole moving (but not moving) deal. I guess do a Marie Kondo and sort and downsize many of these things on the unpacking end, which might be a nice thing to do at leisure. Far too much stuff.

As I write, the internal walls are done, raw plaster drying nicely into the lightly patchy pale pink, which I think I might want to leave it as is?

Scaffolding went up on Friday, the plumbers and heatpump and solar PV install starts tomorrow and may well be done in a week.

So I guess, if I was doing this myself I’d be far more picky about how things look, what spec of things were and maybe even attempt to do it more “traditional” un-cementing much of the walls and replace with insulated lime plaster and all that. But in over 10 years of pondering, I haven’t got close, and it would take ages. Being forced into it, in one week, for free, is maybe good? Good-enough is the enemy of perfect and all that?

Updates / part 2 in a little bit.