We’re all becoming increasingly aware of the need to be kinder to the environment and the benefits, both financial and otherwise, small changes in lifestyle can reap. But one man has taken this to the extreme by making it his life’s work to transform people’s homes in an eco-friendly and energy-efficient way. And what better place to start than on your own home?
Claus Best is a director at Smart Energy Services and the owner of Hay Tor – a bungalow in Bayston Hill, three miles south of Shrewsbury in Shropshire.When he bought his home it was a standard 1950s concrete one-storey property with little to offer those seeking a greener lifestyle.
But thanks to the work of Claus and his team, it is now a super low energy-consuming home packed full with smart devices and clever fixtures and fittings after undergoing a complete transformation in the form of a major retrofit and energy upgrade.Each segment of the building has been looked at and completely overhauled to provide the best results – which in turn gives way to the biggest reduction in energy usage and the biggest drop in the cost of bills.
All of the windows and doors – which were previously metal framed and single glazed – have been changed to triple glazed wooden ones, which gives them a u-value of 1.0W per m2/K. The u-value rates how well a part of a building conducts heat or the rate of heat transfer through one square metre of a structure, divided by the difference in temperature across the structure.As a comparison to the 1.0 u-value result on Hay Tor’s windows and doors, the initial single glazed windows and doors achieved a 4.8 u-value.
