Is it time to turn on the heating yet? An end to energy credits might give you pause.
The universal credits that knocked €1,500 off household energy costs over the past two years were just a band-aid solution, so if you want a longer term solution, it’s time to make a plan.
A full house retrofit will give you a warmer house and lower bills, but costing up to €38,000 for a typical semidetached home after grants, it’s pricey.
There are ways to retrofit on the cheap, however. By picking off the fattest grants, and doing some basic DIY, a semi-d can be made warmer with cheaper bills for just over €1,000.
Attic
The best place to start your budget retrofit is in the attic. These insulation grants are among the most generous and can give you the biggest bang for your buck.
Why attack the attic? Turn on your heating and up to 35 per cent of the warmth is escaping through a poorly insulated roof. It’s a waste of heat and a waste of money.
“For the vast majority of people, insulating the attic is easy to do, there’s little disruption, it’s done in a day and given that heat rises, it has an almost immediate impact,” says Brian McIntyre, high performance building technologies manager with the Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland (SEAI).
McIntyre is in the process of retrofitting his own home, bought two years ago, on a step by step basis.
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Depending on your house, attic insulation grants pay up to 75 per cent of the cost of the work – there are few home renovation projects where someone else stumps up three quarters of the cost.
Grant aid is on a sliding scale running from €800 for an apartment up to €1,500 for a detached home.
The median cost of insulating the attic of a typical semidetached house is about €1,980 say SEAI estimates. The grant will cover €1,300, so the homeowner contributes about €680.
“In my case, I’m in a semidetached house from the 1960s, and the grant covered about 70 – 75 per cent of the cost of work,” says McIntyre.
If you have some insulation, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s enough.
“I’ve been in houses where people say, I have insulation, but they have two to four inches of the yellow fibreglass. You are losing three times as much heat through that as you would something insulated to current standards,” he says.
Depending on when your house was built, there may be too little insulation or what’s there has become crushed over time, reducing its effectiveness.
“Of the pre-2011 houses eligible for grants, just over one third would have substandard insulation compared to today’s standards,” says McIntyre.
The SEAI grant requires attic insulation to be at least 300mm thick, which is around a foot deep.
Space heating is the biggest energy guzzler, accounting for up to 60 per cent of spend. Good attic insulation will retain heat for longer, with a knock on effect on your energy bills.
“Before insulating, you feel how quickly the temperature drops after the heating goes off,” says McIntyre. Householders end up switching it on again quickly when heat has ebbed.
“After insulating, you become conscious that the house is retaining the heat for longer than it did before. You have a feeling of comfort for a lot longer. After a while you notice, oh, I haven’t turned the heating on in a while.”
Windows
Windows and doors are another place where heat is leaking out. Hold a candle or an incense stick around window frames and doors and a flicker will quickly show you where your money is seeping out, says McIntyre.
There is no individual government grant to replace windows. You can get money off window replacement if you retrofit your entire home through the SEAI’s “one-stop-shop” grant scheme, but many of us can’t afford that, and we may not need new windows anyway, says McIntyre.
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“People think that if their windows are 15 to 20 years old, they need to be replaced, but sometimes it’s just the seals that need to be replaced so that the openings fit tightly against the window frames again, preventing those heat leaks,” he says.
Tighten the hinges of windows too, because they may not be closing tightly enough, he says.
Degraded seals around external doors are a problem too.
“There can be a gap there where the heat is coming in. You can get cheap seals that you can put on to the door frame that will seal the gap so that the door closes more tightly against the frame,” says McIntyre.
You can pick up a roll of foam seal with an adhesive strip on the back from any hardware shop for about €10.
“Peel off the strip and put it on the door frame so that when the door closes, it’s making a seal and you don’t have a draught gap,” says McIntyre.
“There can be close gaps where there is heat being lost and there is cold air coming in,” he says.
There can be gaps underneath the inside of window sills too. Using a clear silicone sealant costing about €10 to fill gaps will deal with this.
Pipes
Open plan kitchen-living areas can be a devil for draughts.
“Pipes going out through external walls, there can be big gaps there that might not be visible because it’s down low in a press. That can be an area where there is cold air coming in as well,” says McIntyre.
“Those draughts or movement of air can make an open plan space feel much colder.”
“For pipes going through external walls, you can get expanding foam to fill gaps around the pipes. This serves to keep the heat in and keep both draughts – and mice – out,” he says.
If your en suite bedroom feels a little chilly, gaps around plumbing pipe work can be a cause.
Similarly, if you have a suspended timber floor, check for draughts around the skirting board of external walls.
“Sometimes they can come up behind the skirting and wall. You can use a caulk or silicone sealant for that too,” he says.
Walls
Depending on your house, wall insulation can be the next easiest step with the quickest payback.
“Around 30 to 35 per cent of heat is lost through your walls, so insulating them can be a very effective and relatively inexpensive measure,” says McIntyre.
Your home will heat up faster and retain the residual heat for longer when walls are insulated. This means a more comfortable winter and lower energy bills.
If you have cavity walls – as many home homes built in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s do, insulating them is a no-brainer. Small holes are drilled from the outside, with insulation like polystyrene beads pumped in. There is little disruption and instant payback.
“The grants for wall insulation can account for 70 to 80 per cent of the cost of the works, so a very high proportion,” says McIntyre.
The median cost of this type of cavity insulation for a mid-terrace house is €1,100, but an SEAI grant will contribute over 70 per cent, or €800 towards that. Pump the walls of your semidetached house and it will cost you about €300, with a grant of €1,200 covering 80 per cent of the €1500 median cost.
If you don’t have cavity walls, external wall insulation is extremely effective, but it’s not cheap. The median cost to externally insulate a semidetached house, at €23,300, is high. There is a grant of €6,000 towards that.
The median cost of internal wall insulation for a semi-d is €10,500 and you will get a grant of €3,500 towards that. It requires removing skirting boards, any door frames, cornices and built in furniture too, so that adds to cost.
Chimney
There’s a reason new-build homes don’t have chimneys. Apart from the poor air quality created by burning any kind of solid fuel, a chimney flue in a room acts like a giant heat Hoover.
Because warm air rises, the chimney flue is a big source of heat loss.
“The whole purpose of a chimney is to pull air from the room up through the chimney to keep the fire going, so it’s essentially like having a big hole in the wall,” says McIntyre.
“I’d be surprised if a chimney accounts for less than 10 per cent heat loss. It acts like a suction, just pulling heat out of the room. You need to close that off as far as you can,” he says.
A chimney balloon, costing less than €50 will do the job, he advises.
The balloon provides a physical barrier that prevents cold draughts and heat loss, saving you money on fuel bills and making the living area warmer, more comfortable and with less cross draughts.
There are no tools or structural works required and you can remove the balloon if you want to light a fire.
Turn it down
How warm should your house be? A temperature of about 18-21 degrees is comfortable for most people. Hallways and bedrooms can be cooler, between 15-18 degrees, says the SEAI. You’ll knock 10 per cent off your bill by lowering the temperature by one degree.
Outlook
Household energy costs have been a bit of a roller coaster in the past five years. Our bills now are about €500 cheaper since the peak of the crisis in Ukraine. But they are still about €500 more expensive than five or six years ago. Universal energy credits helped, but having a more energy efficient home will leave you less buffeted by price hikes in future.
Installing for insulation and fixing draughts isn’t as bling as sticking solar panels on your roof, but think of it as quiet luxury.
“You are better off addressing heat loss from the house because it can have a bigger impact in terms of the comfort of being in your home,” says McIntyre. “If you are going to be living there for a long time, you are better off investing in comfort than in solar panels.”
Free retrofit?
Could you be eligible for up to €30,000 of free home retrofit works?
The Fully Funded Energy Upgrade scheme from the SEAI aims to improve the energy-efficiency and warmth of homes owned by those at risk of energy poverty.
Those eligible include recipients of the fuel allowance, the working family payment, one parent family payment, the domiciliary care allowance, carer’s allowance and disability allowance, where it’s received for over six months and there is a child under age seven. Recipients of the Job Seeker’s allowance for more than six months with a child under seven are eligible too.
You must live in your own home, and it must have been built before 2006.
Those who qualify can get free attic, cavity wall, or external or internal wall insulation, and draught proofing, energy efficient lighting and a lagging jacket. Depending on an assessment of your home, the scheme can provide thousands of euro in works for free. The average spend on a qualifying home last year has been €26,602.
There’s a waiting list, and the average time for a home to be completed is up to 20 months from the time of application. If you apply now, it will probably mean another winter or two until your house is a whole lot warmer and more energy efficient but at least you will be in the queue.
You can apply for the scheme on the SEAI’s website. If you qualify, an SEAI surveyor will visit your home and recommend upgrades based on its age, size and your existing heating system.