News

• Summer 2007: 165 days of hot water from solar only. At the end of September we turned the boiler back on to support the solar system in producing hot water and heating.
  
• October 2007: We agreed to become part of the Sustainable Energy Academy, which is a programme which aims to transform the energy efficiency of the exisiting housing stock by 60%. It works via open days in eco-refurbished houses. The first date of an open day for our house will be announced here in a few weeks. 
• 27 November 2007: Dr Boardman's report, Home Truths, identifies the policies needed to deliver an 80% cut in carbon emissions from UK homes by 2050. Having done an eco-refurbishment similar to those promoted in the report, Peter was interviewed by Southern FM for their morning news. ITV local reported about our experience in their evening news. 
• 29 November 2007: The house was 'highly commended' as part of the South East Low Carbon Awards (Private Sector Commitment to Carbon Reduction), which were awarded as part of the "Creating a Low Carbon South East" conference. BBC 1 reported about the Conference featuring our house in The Politics Show on Sunday 2 December 2007.
• 10 December 2007: The local newspaper in Brighton, the Argus, reports about our refurbishment (Building on green Foundations).
• 2 March 2008: The Sustainable Energy Academy and the National Energy Foundation organised an open day for our house to which 35 interested people came.
• 5-6 July 2008: Brighton and Hove Council organised the Eco Open Houses that drew more than 150 visitors to our house within 6 hours. We were surprised that quite a few tradesmen visited as well... On their website, you can find a case study on our house.
• Following the publicity caused by the Eco Open Houses, we welcomed several news agencies in our house: The New York Times featured an article (though, it contains a few mistakes on the technical details), as did The Observer, and the International Herald Tribune (article cannot be found anymore after they restructured their website). Also teams of the US television network CBS, the UK-based TV network British Satellite News, and a South-Korean national TV network visited our home. After all that, we were a bit exhausted.
  
• Summer 2008: Although the summer wasn't really one (only one really summery weekend at all!), we were positively surprised that only twice we had to turn the gas boiler on for two to three days to back up the solar system, although we were five people living in the house. Otherwise, solar hot water all the way through. It really paid off that we put four solar panels on the south facing roof (number three and four were primarily for the heating support in winter). If you are thinking of doing the same, don't forget to install the panels in the right angle, which is actually not that important during most summers as you will often have excess energy anyway, but it is crucial during autumn, winter, and spring.
  
• 4 February 2009: We are thrilled to have won the Low Carbon Performance Award 2009 in the category 'Refurbishment project of the Year'. The awards were run by The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers. A report on our house is published in the April 2009 issue of the CIBSE journal.
• 14th of April 2009: We turned the gas off because we realised that the solar was already delivering everything what was needed. Hopefully, this year we will only turn it back on in Sept/Oct. We will see.