A South Liverpool Homes (SLH) house in Garston has been among the first of 3,800 homes to benefit from a full eco-retrofit to help it become greener, warmer and more efficient for the tenant.
The home is part of a pilot programme, designed to assess the effectiveness of a range of environmentally-friendly measures before they are rolled out across all homes in the years and decades to come.
The 1920s terraced home was chosen because it has a poor energy-efficiency rating, due to its traditional solid-wall construction, making it an ideal testbed to demonstrate the effectiveness of a range of cutting-edge technologies.
The home is one of the first steps on the road to 2050, when SLH aims for homes to be as efficient as possible, reaping the benefits of low CO2 emissions and lower fuel costs for tenants. On the way to 2050 is a range of milestones, put in place to help gradually improve the EPC rating of existing homes.
The next steps in the pilot programme will be to repeat the exercise in other home types, enabling SLH to gather data on the best set interventions for each home type, after which a phased retrofit rollout can be planned and implemented as part of its’ climate change strategy.
Angela Perry, Executive Director of Assets and Development, said:
“We’re really excited about embarking on our journey to 2050. From this one home in Garston, we are already getting great insights into what works well in similar homes across our stock. More importantly, the tenant and her family are already benefitting from a warm and efficient home, at a time when the cost of heating our homes is a big concern for everyone. “This isn’t just about planning for a greener tomorrow. It’s about helping our customers manage their energy bills now.”
We spoke to the tenant Rachel, who has been in the house since February with her family. She said:
“It’s perfect, I love it. It’s just really cosy. I hardly have to put the heating on. It just stays warm. I haven’t got a gas bill whatsoever and the electricity bill is not bad at all. The solar panels really help with that because they keep the water hot. I feel like I’m helping the environment too and that’s great.”
