76 Dial Hill Road

We self-built our house in 2014-15 following the demolition of an existing 1970’s dormer bungalow and constructed it using Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), achieving on completion, an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) score of 91B putting it one point below an A. 

We concentrated on making the fabric of the house as energy efficient as possible and included the following items of technology:

• Gas fired condensing boiler (at the time, heat pumps were not common and using gas as the primary fuel gave us an improved EPC – this has now been changed in the EPC calculation)
• Underfloor heating and radiators
• Feature gas fire
• Solar PV
• Solar saver (Immersun – now a defunct company)
• Hot water circulation
• Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery (MVHR)
• Boiling water tap
• Low energy lighting

In 2023, we carried out some energy efficiency improvements (which will raise our EPC score well into A when it is re-tested) and have the following additional / replacement technologies:

• Air source heat pump (Vaillant) – replacing the gas boiler
• Feature gas fire – now running on bottled LPG
• Solar PV (additional panels)
• Battery (Tesla Powerwall 2)
• Solar saver (MyEnergi Eddi)
• Smart hot water cylinder (Mixergy)
• EV charging (Myenergi Zappi)
• Electric BBQ (Weber)

As part of a more sustainable lifestyle, we also compost all our kitchen waste, collect rainwater for irrigation, grow some of our own vegetables both outdoors and in a greenhouse, and have designed our garden to be more wildlife friendly. 

Over the last two years we have collected weekly data on our energy consumption and costs, which we are able to manage using a combination of the solar PV, battery, solar saver and taking advantage of cheaper electricity and export tariffs.