Home improvement

It is not normally this difficult to find an eco-home. You can spot them a mile off : space-age dwellings clad with ostentatious eco-bling. Yet there is not a wind turbine or shiny bio-dome in sight. Somehow, I am lost in the middle of the quaint Hampshire countryside desperately trying to find the latest state of the art retrofit project carried out by social landlord Radian Group’s sustainability and innovation manager Paul Ciniglio.

A friendly neighbour eventually informs me I have already driven past ‘Sunpower CO2ttage’- which, despite its futuristic name, appears to be a demure, white terraced house - several times. From the road, it doesn’t look like an eco-home. Inside, from the warm sitting room, it doesn’t look like an eco-home either. Sure, there is a rank of photovoltaic and solar thermal panels tucked around on the other side of the roof, but, to the relief of the neighbours, everything else looks pretty normal.   

There is plenty about this cottage that is not normal. First, despite outward appearances, it is the most energy efficient retrofit in Hampshire so far. Second, this retrofit is not part of Radian Group’s 17,000-strong stock, but Mr Ciniglio’s own home.

Rather like the house itself, Mr Ciniglio - a well-known face in sustainability circles - has been hard to find of late. After 13 years pushing the sustainability agenda and carrying out innovative pilot retrofit schemes with grant funding and the housing association’s cash, he decided to put his money where his mouth is and stumped up the cash to overhaul his beloved home of 20 years.

With the help of £5,000 from the South Downs Joint Committee sustainable development fund and £2,500 from the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, he spent £40,000 on the project, which includes a new kitchen and bathroom. After eight months of flat-out dedication, the project completed on 26 March. Now Mr Ciniglio is able to refl ect on the experience.

He shows boundless enthusiasm for the new features his house now boasts, peering into fuse cupboards with an environmentally friendly LED torch and demonstrating every single gadget.

He has carefully overseen every detail of the project himself - insulating his door and trying to plug the gaps in the walls where heat is still escaping. Although cost has forced him to compromise in some areas – installing UPVC-framed windows, for example, instead of environmentalists’ preferred choice of timber – he has stuck to the demands of his conscience throughout; the window frames are recycled UPVC after all. And then there was the question of keeping the retrofit sympathetic to the property’s heritage.

‘I can’t believe the neighbours are still speaking to me,’ he jokes, fiddling with the meter that tells him how much energy his PVs are generating in the spring sunshine. ‘I do really believe in the environment and I was becoming more and more aware of issues around scarce energy resources. I suppose this is me practising at home what I preach at work. I want to inspire other housing associations and private homeowners about what you can achieve with an existing property.’

When we get down to the nitty-gritty of how much Mr Ciniglio has really achieved, the facts are genuinely impressive.   The retrofit has cut overall household carbon dioxide emissions by 80.4 per cent. So far, the improvements have saved 289 kg of carbon dioxide and the PVs are set to generate sufficient income through the new feed-in tariffs that he will barely pay a penny for his electricity. He will have no heating or hot water bills.   

The cottage now joins the network of ‘old homes, super homes’, which shows the public how to cut emissions from existing homes while preserving their heritage. As well as a personal example, it is important for social landlords which, like Radian, are starting retrofit projects in isolated rural areas. Many of their properties are reliant on oil-fired heating systems and so Sunpower CO2ttage’s bucolic setting provides plenty of inspiration.   Though the air source heat pump might be expensive, it cuts the carbon footprint of heating a rural property significantly and so beats conventional oil-fired systems and storage heaters hands down.

But how easy would it be to export the improvements Mr Ciniglio has made to his own home to one of Radian’s properties? And is some of the technology just too difficult to manage in rented homes?

Social landlords trying to persuade tenants that eco-friendly homes are worthwhile will be relieved to learn that much of the energy efficiency work in this project is invisible.  The insulation in the loft is extra thick and made from recycled glass bottles, the double-glazed windows are top-of-the-range and the radiators use a lower volume of water than normal, which costs less to heat. Although the shower uses a great deal less water than a conventional one, when I stick my hands under it, it still feels like a power shower as air pumps at high pressure through the head at the same time as the water.   

The showpieces of the house - the solar thermal and photovoltaic panels - sit quietly on the roof, asking for no input at all from the occupier.

It is the small details which Mr Ciniglio says will need modifying for social tenants. For example, although he enjoys controlling the heating using a wireless thermostat, he worries that such a flashy piece of technology could easily be lost.

One of the challenges he faces at Radian is educating tenants to cut down their energy usage. Leading me into the kitchen, he says Sunpower CO2ttage has a solution to that as well. Next to the kettle, an energy consumption meter shows exactly how much electricity is being used at that moment and how much it will cost. When Mr Ciniglio starts making a cup of tea, the figures on the meter shoot up as the kettle begins to boil.

‘It would be great to have these displayed at eye level in every tenant’s kitchen so they could see just how much energy they are using,’ he says. ‘If they’ve got all their appliances on: television playing, hairdryer blowing, lights on in rooms they aren’t using, they’ll see how much they are paying and this could immediately drive energy consumption down.’

Lending the meter to a wealthy friend of his had the opposite effect, however. ‘He liked to have it on display in the kitchen so he could show off just how much he could afford to pay on his energy bills.’

But for tenants on low incomes who might not be particularly worried about climate change, this prelude to a smart meter could persuade them to change their behaviour.

Although as Radian’s innovation and sustainability manager, Mr Ciniglio is already very familiar with retrofit technology, he admits there have been some rocky moments on the path to that 80 per cent cut. For example, there was the night when the water heating unit for his solar thermal panels packed in.

‘I could see pink liquid - which is the water containing anti-freeze which runs through the panels - seeping through the loft hatch,’ he says. ‘And when I got up there, I saw that a pipe had broken and the liquid was spraying out. I had to hold it together while calling for a plumber to come to fix it.’

On top of the normal disruption brought by a refurbishment project, the technology which makes the Sunpower CO2ttage what it is has caused a number of problems. First, there were very few British suppliers who could meet Mr Ciniglio’s needs, so the PVs are from Japan and the solar thermals come from Germany. And although local engineers were very happy to fit panels, or the water heating unit, or the air source heat pumps, the real headache was trying to find someone to connect the different systems.

‘It was near impossible to get someone to fit pipes between one unit on the roof and its corresponding technology inside the house. No one wanted to take responsibility for something that they hadn’t supplied.’

One of the lessons other social landlords can learn from this project is that the British renewable energy industry is still in its infancy. Future programmes such as the roll-out of the warm homes standard across social housing will help manufacturers catch up though, says Mr Ciniglio. And presumably retrofit projects like the Sunpower CO2ttage will stimulate the demand from social landlords for British-made products.   

Those problems all seem rather insignificant now to Mr Ciniglio as he looks around his smart, environmentally friendly, yet entirely normal-looking home.   The guestbook is bulging with praise for the ‘inspirational’ property and a sign in the attic tells me that Mr Ciniglio is ‘not bald, just solar-powered’. But it is the sight of those carbon savings stacking up on the meter that will prove whether or not the project is ultimately worthwhile.

Paul Ciniglio is sustainability and innovation manager at Radian Group, www.radian.co.uk

Have your say

You must sign in to make a comment