Daniel and Sandra Davey reap rewards of the One Shop Stop Retrofit

Originally, the couple wanted to remodel their kitchen and fix a leaking conservatory which was making the house cold and damp.

However, when it was suggested to them to consider improving their home’s BER from its D rating to a more efficient A rating, it seemed like a no-brainer because of the long-term benefits they would gain.

“We wanted a warm home and originally the plan was to put an upgraded kitchen into the house, until we got a bit of advice. Somebody came in and said, ‘You're going to end up taking this kitchen out in three- or four-years’ time and retrofitting anyway.’ When somebody points that out, it seems an awful lot more logical,” Daniel tells the Irish Examiner.

“We were living in a house that wasn't only cold but was dysfunctional from my perspective. I think a lot of people don't start at the point of thinking about the retrofit, because It's too big, and that's where we were as well.” 

“But what we realised was the [SEAI] grants were giving us an opportunity to do something more and that we were going to get this opportunity to upgrade our home and to make it more efficient while making some cosmetic improvements to it. So, we begged and borrowed, and we took out our own personal finance. We had about €130,000 in total for everything.” 

Daniel first thought that the retrofit process would be complicated and a bit overwhelming when applying for grants. But he says that it was actually “ridiculously simple and easy” because of the One Stop Shop and Larkrock, the SEAI-approved contractors who did the building work on their home, applied for the grants on their behalf.

The couple opted for external insulation and installed solar panels and a heat pump into their house, and Daniel says here is huge value in upgrading everything all at once. 

“The value of the solar panels is huge, not just from the financial savings, but from a mindset perspective,” he says.

“It just raises your whole awareness to what you can do in the long term to save yourself money. We have eight panels, and they generated €178 worth of electricity in August alone. We can track that through our app. If you go back to March, we generated €98 which I would never have anticipated could happen in a country like Ireland.” 

Additionally, Daniel says that installing the heat pump was one of the best decisions they took when retrofitting the house. 

“It's been the best thing that we've done, because we have a house that's A rated in terms of insulation. It’s a consistent temperature in the house all the time. The only downside that we have so far is that the air is so much drier, and you have to water your plants more often,” he jokes.

Daniel and wife Sandra have also seen a massive difference in their energy bills since they renovated the house. “We haven't really lived through an entire winter yet, but over the summer months, our bills were €70 per month – that’s electricity, heat, water. It includes the TV, us doing the cooking, everything,” Daniel says.

“Our first bill was maybe that little bit higher. It came in at around €300 or €400 for the first bill, because the heat pump was on, and it had to bring the house up to the proper temperature, and it was on when the house wasn't properly insulated yet. But over the last four months, those bills reduced to about 70 or 80 quid. It’s remarkable.” 

Despite the massive investment and cost it took to upgrade the house from D to A on the BER scale, Daniel says he was “reassured that it was the right thing to do”.

“It’s a hard enough decision to make if you're looking at the numbers alone,” he explains. “But when you put everything else in it, it makes sense. I am conscious about the environment and sustainability, so when you bring that element into it, it’s an easier decision to make. And when you look out on a sunny day and think to yourself, ‘We're saving money today’, there’s a real feel-good factor to that.” 

Another reassuring factor about going through the SEAI’s One Stop Shop service and having the Larkrock builders on board was that the Daveys had experienced experts on hand to give them advice and keep them on the right track during their retrofit journey.

“When we moved into the house first, we tried to do little things like improving the windows and the insulation of the attic. But when Larkrock came in and they looked at it, there was still more insulation required to install the heat pump and solar panels, there was still a lot of work that needed to be done, and that's the value of having experts on board,” Daniel explains.

“You need it done to the grade that the SEAI will approve of. After the work was completed, they came and checked the house to make sure that it met the proper standards. There’s a comfort in that and it's reassuring that there's a process in place to make sure that this is done properly, because you hear horror stories. We have friends who did retrofits, and the wrong pump was put into homes that were not properly insulated, and you hear about the wild bills they get as a result.  

“We had people who we had trust in with Dermot Bannon and Claire Irwin, and then we had Larkrock too. Before we started this, I might as well have been on Mars, because I knew nothing about it.  

“It’s an education process around all the components, and you need to learn to understand how this all works together. There’s an ecosystem within your home, understanding how all these things fit together. It’s important as this is our family home and we're not going anywhere soon,” he continues.

“If you’re considering retrofitting, think about the quality of your living time and living in a healthier environment in a better circumstance for longer. It makes an awful lot more sense.”