Alastair Graham

February 24, 2023

Retrofit 10: Who to ask

One of the things that you'll need to call upon when you are looking to add renewables to your property is the experience of others. There are lots of folks on the internet with opinions, but what you are really after are people who have either taken the step and are ahead of you and can advise on what to do / not do, orpeople who are asking the questions that you want answers too (or the questions that you hadn't even thought of yet!). This post will hopefully give some pointers as to good sources of reliable information.

Local support

  • I think that I mentioned it in one of my early posts but Nextdoor was a really useful site for finding others with home energy tech who were willing to talk it through and show it off. I'm not a big fan of the Nextdoor interface, but for this one use-case it was really helpful.
  • Local green groups and home energy groups can likely provide a similar route to putting you in touch with people who have already made the retrofit journey.

Heat pump support

  • The best community online that I've come across for well informed discussions on heat pumps is the Renewable Heating Hub forums. Check out the archive to see if there are discussions relating to the model of heat pump you are looking at installing, or more generally about the tech you are interested in.
  • If you know the model of heat pump you are interested in then you could check out this site and try to find that model applied to a similar house in a similar part of the country - then you can see information on energy usage etc. It's only indicative as every propoerty and every installation is unique when it comes to heat pumps, but it may prove interesting for the data-minded.
    • A whole host of information and links related to the code and tech behind this site can be found here.
  • Heat Geek is a site worth checking out to find well trained installers (they also have a YouTube channel that is very interesting.
  • If you are looking for installers, also consider the MCS site 
  • The BetaTalk podcast is probably one of the best out there if you are interested in heat engineering and heat pumps.

General information

  • I came across Passipedia the other day whilst trying to find out more about the EnerPHit standard, and it looks like a comprehensive source of information to do with Passive Houses. If that's you, then it could be worth checking out.
  • There's lots of home energy advice on the CSE website.

Note #1: This is a tiny subset of useful sites. Make sure you do your research properly and ask around as much as possible. Don't rush into an installation. People on the sites listed here will be able to point you to further information sources.

Note #2: General social media sites are (unexpectedly) fairly awful. I have joined a couple of groups on Facebook but they seem to mainly be full of people with complaints about specific technologies not working (which in most cases is down to poor installation). I used to find Twitter more useful but since Musk's takeover the community discussing energy topics has fragmented to sites such as Mastodon or LinkedIn and it's not quite so handy.