Hot and green: get ready for winter

Save money and energy – and be warm. EMMA CULLINANhas 10 top tips, and asks an architect how to get an A-rating

SOLAR PANELSuse the sun's power to heat a percentage of your hot water. In a four- to five-person house these will cost about €3,000 to €4,000 to install and the SEAI offers grants of €800.

ROOF INSULATIONstops rising heat in its tracks: an uninsulated roof can let up to a quarter of your household heat escape out into the sky. Insulating a roof costs from about €75 to €400 and can be a DIY job. It saves up to €200 a year. The SEAI has attic insulation grants of €200.

CUT ELECTRICITY USE. Households spend about €40 a year for everything they leave on standby. You can either expend the effort turning them off or buy a standby saver that lets you turn everything off at once. Also, turn lights off when leaving a room and buy A-rated electrical appliances.

INSULATE WALLS:about a third of the heat that escapes from an uninsulated home leaves through the wall – hot air gravitates towards cold surfaces. SEAI grants for cavity wall insulation are €320, for external wall insulation, €4,000 and internal dry lining gets a grant of €2,000.

SEAL GAPSbetween floorboards, put mineral wool between joists that hold up floors. Solid insulation can be put above concrete floors.

PV (PHOTOVOLTAIC) PANELSuse the sun to create electricity. In a standard house these cost about €13,500 to install (if you make more electricity than you use you may, one day, be able to sell it back to the national grid). Think about passive solar gain too – if you have large south-facing windows you can reduce heating bills.

BUY LOW-ENERGY BULBS:each costs around €3.50 less to run a year than traditional tungsten bulbs. Only about 6 per cent of the electricity used by tungsten bulbs is turned into visible light. Plus, the EU is phasing them out. Change your light shades too: a dark one can cut light emissions by up to a half.

BLOCK AIR GAPSin doors and windows with draught excluders and save yourself up to €30 a year. Put in double or triple glazing, which could save you around €180 a year – or even just put up heavier curtains.

PUT THERMOSTATIC VALVESon individual radiators and only use rads in the rooms you need them in. This costs around €170 and can save about €35 a year in an average family home. You can also zone heating areas – such as bedrooms and living spaces – and set timers to come on differently for each zone.

BOILERSburn about 60 per cent of energy used in houses. Replacing an old boiler with an efficient condensing boiler can save around €350 a year. If you buy a combination boiler you will get hot water when you need it rather than having to heat it in a cylinder first. There are SEAI grants of €560 for a boiler if you upgrade heating controls too.

Going green? It's simpler than you think

Architect Bill Scott, who runs courses on how to make homes more energy-efficient, upgraded his 1930s house to an A3 rating, writes EMMA CULLINAN

IT IS THE WIND turbines and solar panels that wave their eco-credentials from atop and beside houses that often scare people into thinking this green upgrading is a complicated business. Never mind that our northern-European brethren have been using eco-technology for decades.

But there is no need to start with such highfalutin' measures – you can take it step by step from basic energy-savers such as turning off lights and upgrading your fridge.

When I asked eco-architect Jay Stuart to recommend a good solar panel he suggested I start with an eco-friendly combination boiler which would reap me more rewards, faster, than putting in a solar panel.

William Scott of Scott and MacNeill architects even suggests making a long-term plan starting with a look at your energy consumption and learning to manage it. "The biggest problem people have is confusion," he says. "There's a mass of information coming at them and they have to decide what is relevant to them and what is hyped. They are concerned about getting the right advice – and the wrong measures could leave them with defects such as a lack of ventilation and mould.

"My message is to step back and think through a long-term plan. A 10 or 15-year perspective is quite normal for people in their homes."

The first step in such a plan would be cutting energy use – by the familiar methods of lowering thermostats and turning appliances off stand-by, to putting in insulation, double or triple glazing, upgrading your boiler and heating system, and draught-proofing.

Later stages would involve creating your own energy, whether through a wind turbine and PV (photovoltaic) panels to make electricity, solar panels (to make hot water) and air or ground-source heat pumps (to contribute to the central heating).

Key considerations are the cost of any measures, the amount of disruption their installation causes and how long they take to repay the investment (although more eco-minded people may not worry about financial paybacks, so long as they are helping to save the planet).

For instance changing lightbulbs costs mere euros (prices of bulbs still vary widely), cause almost no disruption and pay back quickly whereas external wall insulation costs between €7,000 and €20,000, pays back over between 10 and 20 years and takes about a week to do while a ground-source heat pump can cost more than €10,000, probably involves moving out of your home for a while and takes more than 20 years to earn its keep in energy saved.

Scott is not a fan of the latter. "It runs on electricity which is more expensive than other energy sources. I would perhaps recommend it where you have a free supply of electricity, maybe with a wind turbine," says Scott, who recently made his own home in Dún Laoghaire more energy efficient.

He began by sealing draughts and replacing open fires with a wood-burning stove to make it more airtight. "It goes back to my approach of reducing demand for energy in the first place: go to the building envelope and insulate your building fabric as much as you can," says Scott who runs courses for homeowners – on how to make their homes energy efficient – at the RIAI (Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland).

He put external insulation on 85 per cent of his house and dry-lined the rest (internally) so as not to affect the external appearance of his home. He also replaced the timber floors with insulated concrete. "That proved to be a big job; you have to rewire everything under the floor."

A layer of 400mm quilt-insulating was put into the attic along with an insulated trap door. "That all made the house very airtight and warm, and the energy use is very low," he says.

Having done this he then needed to make sure the house was ventilated properly. "As a basic measure you can poke a hole in each bedroom and put an extractor in bathrooms but that counters all the work you have done, so we went for a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery. The filters need cleaning every couple of months but it is not a huge job."

He also put in double glazing at the front of the house and treble glazing at the north-facing back. And, capitalising on the house's south-facing orientation, he added a porch to the front which creates both a draught lobby and captures any sun. "It is a source of considerable heat, and when the porch is warmer than the house we open the door and it permeates through the house."

He also overhauled his heating by changing his boiler for one with higher efficiency (some old boilers are only 50 per cent efficient while new ones can be 91 per cent efficient). He zoned his central heating, "We have a lot of zones – six – and probably too much. It just requires too much management. People might have three zones: for bedrooms, daytime living and night-time living." This way you can programme each zone to be heated at different times.

His solar panels on the roof give him more hot water than he needs in the summer but he gets "very little" between November and February. "This was a lously year for solar energy," he says, noting how in tune with the weather you get when you live by the sun's power.

Since having the work done Scott says his total energy bill for the 220sq m (2,360sq ft) house is just under €1,000 a year.

Such eco-measures will become more relevant to all of us as building regulations become stricter and Scott is currently working on CPD (continuing professional development) courses for architects on new (Part L) regulations coming in on December 1st.

"A house built to 2011 regs will use 60 per cent less energy than one complying with the 2005 regs," he says. "And 2005 wasn't bad. In 2016 we are looking at low to zero carbon houses."

Meanwhile, Scott is enjoying the ambient warmth and good air quality of his snugger home. "You don't suddenly feel – when you're sitting watching Frontlineat night – that the boiler has gone off. When a house is well insulated and draught free the hangover from heat input lasts a long time. Even last winter when we left the house for three weeks, we came back to a home of 13 degrees. You don't come back to a freezing house."

The next How to create a more energy efficient homesession will take place from 10am-1pm at the RIAI (Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland) at 8 Merrion Square, Dublin 2. To book call 676 1703 or see riai.ie. There will be another course in January.