How to plan and pay for an energy-efficient super home

All you need to know to start that deep retrofit journey to a more sustainable property — made from the house you're already in

Baffled and financially skittish at the prospect of a whole-house, deep retrofit of €35,000–€100,000? 

These largely invisible improvements could not only slash your heating bills, but change your experience at home for ever.

Deep retro-fit, as opposed to what some wags dub 'shallow retrofit', is the carrying-out of serious energy upgrades all at one time. So, what are the key motivating factors for property owners to bury improvements into their home which they can’t 'see'?

BEFORE: A 1970s Wicklow bungalow before deep retrofit.

Brian McIntyre, executive of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland's deep-retrofit programme, says, “People are becoming more and more conscious of the importance of being comfortable in their home, especially having spent much more of their time at home in the past year. 

"If the cost of heating to keep the house at a satisfying temperature is high, or the indoor temperature is often cold, it's worth considering a deeper retrofit to reduce the heat loss and increase their level of comfort.

"Anecdotally, people who have undergone a deeper retrofit, from a lower rating up to an A or B, have done so due to a change in circumstances, which has prompted a renovation of their home, or building an extension,” Brian says.

AFTER: The bungalow after being transformed into a contemporary, low-carbon home, bringing it from a BER E1 to A2. Showing the handsome finish of new external insulation, the project took just five months.

Not everyone will be able to take on the financial and practical demands of a full retrofit all at once; and a staged approach of affordable improvements will suit many homeowners better.

There is considerable grant aid, addressing up  to 30% of the cost for some  improvements.

Just to explain: There is an over-arching programme to fund full, cohesive, deep retrofit of individual homes managed by the SEAI. In November of 2020, the National Home Retrofit Scheme (with savings of 35% on grant-aided work), replaced the pilot programme (2017-2019), which had covered up to 50% of costs.

This new scheme is also not automatically open to application by individual owners. It's based on co-operation by groups of owners and economies of scale.

Confused? Brian says, "The grant scheme is designed to encourage the development of one-stop-shops and engage groups of private households, registered housing associations, and local authorities who wish to participate in delivering energy-efficiency upgrades, specifically in domestic buildings."

Applications (for homes built before 2006) are made through a one-stop-shop or by registering with a project co-ordinator. If successful, an assessment of your home, and a designed package of measures to achieve at least a B2 energy rating, is submitted to SEAI for review and approval.

526 homes have been upgraded through the deep-retrofit schemes, all achieving some measure of an A-rating. This holistic, one-stop-shop mechanism is something the SEAI are  keen to develop as the retrofit initiative goes forward. 

For anyone wishing to get involved in the scheme, see www.seai.ie/grants/national-home-retrofit/one-stop-shops/

INTERVENTION

According to Brian McIntyre and his team, one million houses in Ireland are in need of serious intervention and hundreds of thousands of properties are uncomfortable. For many of us, achieving a snug BER is a case of combining SEAI grant aid with savings and home-improvement loans. 

SEAI grants are applied for individually by the homeowner and paid out on the completion of works. Conducted largely online, the process is straightforward once you meet the criteria.

A Dimplex air-source heat pump and water tank fitted in an attached garage. Ensure you have the room for your heat pump and its associated fittings. Pumps can be sited outdoors and operate relatively quietly (around 50db). dimplexrenewables.com

So, from a cold start, how do we assess what our home needs? Barry says, “Our experience dealing with homeowners suggests that there is demand for expert, independent, technical advice and SEAI always recommend that a homeowner wanting to upgrade their home should start with building energy rating, or BER assessment, first.”

The BER is calculated through energy use for space and hot-water heating, ventilation, and lighting. 

The report, with the resulting rating, includes recommendations for improvements. If the likely cost of doing those works at one time is outside of your budget, then it is possible to develop a step-by-step approach to achieve the B2 (or better) over time. Note: The SEAI support the improvement of 'specific elements', but they don't fund them all, and they won't back an early installation of an HP in this staged approach, or, say, IR whole-house heating.

Current building regulations demand that if 25% of the external envelope of the house (extant) is being altered during a major renovation or extension, the whole house is expected to be brought up to a B2 BER on completion, with a parallel set of energy-efficiency improvements. 

These could be SEAI grant-aided. This makes sense during the upheaval of serious works, where you are, say, putting 40m2 plus on the house (which demands planning permission). There are exceptions, where reaching a B2 is simply not 'cost optimal', and that's judged case by case.

Given that the SEAI grants don't cover every project (window/door changes or upgrading an oil or gas boiler, for example) and only assist in the capital outlay, what are we likely to be spending and what should we be doing, even  incrementally? 

In the last update to the deep-retrofit programme run by the SEAI in April, the average, total capital cost to upgrade a home from an average BER rating of F to an average A3 (from 364 homes) is €60,229. A rating of F is appalling, so you may not have as far to go reducing this figure significantly.

Even when you don't expect to reach the heights of a B2 BER, deep-retrofit projects would include the following. Various problems, from damp to dodgy roofing, should be surveyed along the way to bring the  envelope of the house up to a good, tight, dry standard of Part L (2019), as laid out in the building regulations.

ENERGY UPGRADES

Roof insulation: 300mm is the standard for typical fibreglass insulation on a non-converted attic floor, but you may want to exceed this mark and take insulation measures to the roof structure itself. Progressive contractors are offering focused, retrofit packages to include this kind of work.

New regulations will compel you to bring the overall BER rating of your home to at least a B2 BER, if you are adding more than 40m2 or detailing more than 25% of the extant house during a renovation (for example installing external wall insulation). This is a good time to use the grant system managed by the SEAI to carry out a holistic, whole-house energy upgrade. Picture: iStock

Upgrade wall insulation, if it is below  standards. This can be achieved with interior (dry lining), exterior insulation, or cavity fill (done from the outside). Check out the SEAI grant section for detailed information.

Change out external windows and doors, with a high U-value, that are leaching energy.

Upgrade a gas/oil boiler and controls where it is more than 15 years old and less than 86% efficient, or replace electric storage heaters (if main heating system) if over 15 years old and less than 45% heat retention. There’s no SEAI grant aid, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

Raise the (heat loss index) HLI of the house to install a heat pump or other sustainable heating solution, like IR heat panels or biomass; de-carbonise your central heating, as far as possible, using renewable energy sources.

Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) will increase the overall energy efficiency of the house, and it's a standard addition, where we're approaching passive house standard.

Energy improvements are now a popular, innovative, low-interest financing product with banks, building societies, and credit unions, as they offer certified results embedded in the house fabric. Some credits unions are already promoting and facilitating the National Home Retrofit Scheme, with their members and deep-retrofit contractors (one-stop shop) partnered with the SEAI.

Green mortgages offer two paths to a leaner, greener primary home or apartment, or even an investment to let. First of all, you can simply buy a A1-B2 or (sometimes) B3-rated house or apartment and take out a green mortgage to finance it. 

They are to a set timeframe, from four years up, at an attractive, fixed-percentage rate. AIB's rate starts from 2.1%, for example, and the Bank of Ireland offer 0.20% off any of their fixed-rate options, ranging from one to 10 years for an A3-rated home.

Improving attic insulation is a typical staged project for improving the BER on your home, and you would be advised to exceed the recommendations. Retrofit grants with the SEAI are ceilinged at €300, around 30% of the cost to insulate the floor of a standard attic to 300mm in fibre-glass batting. Picture: iStock

If you have as little as five years left on your mortgage and a suitable house, it's possible to roll a green mortgage into your current mortgage. 

Green mortgages can also be finessed to retrofit improvements to a house you are buying to reach a better BER, but it's a high BER rating of A3 in most cases. You will be expected to work with a project manager (for example, your architect), with a firm paper trail confirmed by a BER on completion of the works.

There are a number of other green-lending products available for home-energy upgrades in Ireland, according to the SEAI, including the An Post Green Hub (€5,000-€75,000/50% of the loan used to complete works availing of SEAI home-energy grants), and the credit unions' Green Home Hub.

The League of Credit Unions offers this example: For a €20,000, five-year variable interest-rate loan with 60 monthly repayments of €417.21 and a representative APR of 9.21%, the total amount payable is €25,032.48. 

Rates vary union to union, and some branches offer a loan interest rebate at the end of the year; creditunion.ie.

"Some products are mortgaged-based," Brian McIntyre says, "while others provide unsecured loans. We expect to see more low-cost financing products coming into the market soon and, as part of an integrated, home-energy upgrade offering to consumers, with one-stop-shops.

Local authorities also provide some home-energy upgrade grants (not necessarily solely energy-related), HOPS, for instance (housing-adaptation grants for older people and people with a disability (private houses)."

See www.seai.ie