About...

The Site

This site documents our progress through an extension, an EnerPHit retrofit and a complete redecoration, top-to-bottom.

It represents a multi-year project, and one we’re committed to completing to improve our quality of life, reduce our energy bills and significantly improve our environmental impact. By documenting the process, we have a place to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and a reminder of how solutions were implemented when we inevitably decide to change something down the line.

What We Started With

The property is a mid 1930s three-bed semi-detached. It offers generous proportions, a well proportioned rear garden and thanks to its cul-de-sac location, is surprisingly quiet and peaceful. Unfortunately, the house was previously rented out and is consequently rough around the edges - peeling wallpaper, missing kitchen trim, and, when we moved in, a boiler that had seized up! We quickly discovered that the house is incredibly draughty and poorly insulated, with the feeling that we need the heating on as soon as there is even a gentle breeze.

Where We’re Going

In a previous house, we’d taken the renovation one room at a time and had taken advantage of the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to install a heat pump. The heat pump worked brilliantly, but on reflection, had we put greater focus on the building’s fabric first, I’m confident we could have got a smaller, cheaper and more efficient heat pump. You live and learn, but it is for precisely this reason that we’re taking a fabric-first approach to ensure energy efficiency and comfort with a long-term attitude to investment.

How Long Will It Take?

Honestly, who knows? When we first started looking at the extension in January 2026, we naively thought we’d be able to start construction on the extension in the late summer or early autumn. After a few frank conversations, we’re now working towards starting the extension in Spring 2027. We have a finite budget and a desire not to put ourselves in any undue financial debt, so the overall EnerPHit project will take significantly longer. However, as each phase should bring measurable improvements, the hope is that we’ll see benefits sooner rather than later.