Category: Eco

First fully solar house?

And here it is on rightmove

The vendor is aiming to achieve Zero carbon performance. However, it will not be known whether this status has been achieved until the monitoring process is complete. In the event that an energy shortfall is identified the vendor intends to use the analysis from the monitoring process to establish in which part or parts of the specification the shortfall may have arisen and at no charge to the purchaser will add additional heat collecting capacity, buffer storage, heat pump capacity or such other facilities considered necessary to achieve Zero Carbon status.

Do yourself a home energy check – The Home Energy Check is a unique tool backed by the expertise of the Energy Saving Trust.

It’s important to note, in calculating your energy use the HEC makes assumptions about your home, for example the number of people that live in your home.

It’s also not an official Energy Performance Certificate.

Got half a tin of paint in the cupboard that you’re never going to use again?

If you’re having a clear out whilst getting reading to move you should perhaps think about keeping the paint if it’s still being used in the house. You could leave it for the next people.

Or you could try it on freecycle – you can get rid of almost anything on there! Do a search for your local freecycle group on your favourite search engine.

Or try to find local paint recycling organisations like Community Repaint

It’s much better for the environment for old paint to be reused rather than sent to the tip.

An interesting guide to selling your house if you have solar panels installed.
Published: February 2012

I have seen a couple of houses with solar panels on rightmove but haven’t seen anything in the details about them!

Want to buy an eco house? This green moves site only lists eco friendly properties

This house is for sale and has solar panels. An interesting line in the details though:
The present owners have installed solar panelling which would be available to a purchaser under a separate negotiation.

Whilst I like the idea of buying a house with solar, it seems a bit strange that they’d consider not including them in the price to start with.

I was recently reading about thermal blinds that are designed to keep the heat in, and thought what a good idea they are.
At 247Blinds they have Solar Protection Blinds which are dual purpose – they help keep the sun’s heat out during the summer and keep the warm in during the winter. These ECO2 blinds can provide energy savings of up to 12% which sounds like a fantastic idea especially as energy bills seem to be going up all the time.

Picking the right blind colour can be tricky but luckily they allow you to order swatches as samples to check for colour matching. Sometimes it’s nice to use a bold colour and use this as a highlight on other accessories.
It sounds very simple having blinds that help keep the heat in, but perhaps something we should all be looking at doing for every room in our homes!

Chilly this morning and it’s got me thinking about how you can make your house warmer. If you’ve got a listed building or are in a conservation area you might not be allowed standard double glazing (or triple glazing!) so you might have single pane windows still. If you have then you could look at some of the window film insulation products available to help you make your home more cosy in the winter – Tesa Insulating Film for Windows, Transparent 4 x 1.5 Metre (Maximum)
is at amazon and allows you to wrap your windows internally to give them some extra insulation value.
It has the disadvantage of needing to be kept on until Spring and that means you’ll not be able to open windows if you’ve covered them all over, but you could do the separate parts of the window and use draft excluder tape to ensure the windo fits snuggling.

window insulation is simple, easy to apply and can make a difference to how warm you’ll be this winter. With rising fuel costs it pays to start looking at what you can do to make your house more insulated.
Even blocking drafts from doors and windows can make a big difference to how warm you’ll feel so why not start this today!