Property News: Bertram Street council house energy-saving pilot scheme could be rolled out across borough

Published: 24 March 2011
by DAN CARRIER

WHEN the severe weather hit London at the end of November last year, instead of rushing to the heating switch and whacking it up to 11, the Clyne family sat back and relaxed.

They were one of the first households in the borough to have their home “retro-fitted”. 

The Clynes, who live in a council-owned property in Bertram Street, Highgate Newtown, were given super-efficient insulation by Camden Council as part of an ongoing project to turn ageing Victorian terraces from toxic timebombs into clean, green, low-carbon houses.

Tom and Yvonne Clyne and their family of three children have lived in the house for 16 years. The Town Hall selected them after sending letters to households of older, large street properties – notorious for draughts caused by ill-fitting windows, no wall cavities, cracks and leaky roofs, all resulting in high energy bills.

Mr Clyne said: “The work finished at the beginning of November, just in time for the winter’s first real cold snap.

“By the time December came and it was very severe, we were warm and snug without having to turn up the heating. While my neighbours were complaining about the cold, we were fine.”

The work included installing insulation, windows, solar panels and a more efficient boiler.

“It is a Victorian terraced house dating from around the 1870s,” said Mr Clyne. “It has solid walls – no cavities – so the builders have installed solid wall insulation.”

This was put on inside walls and is done by adding 112-millimetre-thick cladding. 

Mr Clyne said: “You lose a very small amount of space but it has  enhanced the rooms, as it has actually added some character to the building.”

The windows were also replaced by a new form of glazing made by experts Pilkington. The panes have a form of gas sandwiched between two sheets of glass that provide insulation – and as they were recently fitted have no wobbles to let air in or out. 

The house is also well placed to capture the power of the sun as it creeps over the slopes to Highgate. With a flat roof, they have used the space to install solar panels to provide hot water and electricity – a system that has worked well so far, according to Mr Clyne. The project, costing £150,000, was paid for with a grant from the Technology Strategy Board.

“The house is now part of an ongoing experiment,” said Mr Clyne. “We have monitoring systems to look at how we use electricity for the next two years. All the figures of energy use are being downloaded and it means the experts can work out what has worked and what hasn’t.”

The experience at Bertram Street has drawn on two other projects: Camden Council has already trialled a new green home experiment in St Augustine’s Road, Camden Town, while Belsize Park home owners John and Zoe Doggart retro-fitted their house in 2009 – and so have lived with the benefits for some time.

Mr Doggart is a retired home and environment consultant and now promotes a scheme to retro-fit Victorian housing stock.

He said: “We started the work in July 2009 and finished in October.”

The property is a coach house dating from the early Victorian period in Belsize Park Gardens – and while not typical in size of the area, it is comparable in terms of construction techniques. 

Mr Doggart said: “This was part of a long-term plan – we had been improving the house since we moved in 1998. We’d put in a better boiler and new lights, but we were considering doing a redecoration so we thought, ‘let’s do the whole house properly’.”

A £20,000 bill, helped by a small grant from the Town Hall, has given them some insulation, which means the house is essentially wrapped up in a giant tea cosy – although of course you can’t tell by looking at it. The upshot is lower fuel bills and a more comfortable place to live in.

Mr Doggart added;: “The home just ate energy. The Belsize homes are beautiful to look at but they are totally toxic to the environment. We wanted our home to be both beautiful, and green. We did not like the idea of our home contributing to global warming.”

And while the cost to fit the insulation and do other works has quite large, Mr Doggart has found he has saved more than £1,000 a year, and his home has increased in value by around 6 per cent – easily covering the works, considering the area it is in. And, most importantly, it is no longer belching out heat and adding to global warming.

Mr Doggart said: “Our carbon footprint has dropped by 70 per cent. If everyone did this, we would simply not need to build any new nuclear power stations at all.”

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