Getting an Assessment
The couple moved into their flat in September 2020. Calum is Chairperson of Glasgow Community Energy, which focuses on decarbonising community and council buildings across the city.
“We’re looking at various ways that people within the city can own the energy infrastructure in Glasgow,” says Calum.
Tom Nockolds [Co-Founder of Loco Home Retrofit] is a fellow Glasgow Community Energy board member. Calum subsequently became a member of Loco Home.
“Late last year, we created a Memorandum of Understanding between Loco Home Retrofit and Glasgow Community Energy. This document lays out the objectives of our two organisations and creates a shared commitment that we want to work together,” says Calum.
“We get a lot of emails from homeowners asking, for example, ‘Do you do solar panels on homes?’ We always answer, ‘Go and chat to Loco Home.’ Eventually, I thought that as I keep recommending people to them, I should probably get some skin in the game and get a home assessment.”
Chris Carus [Co-Founder of Loco Home Retrofit] visited the couple’s flat in autumn 2023 to conduct an assessment. He recommended optimising the boiler by setting a lower flow temperature. Other considerations were eliminating draughts from the floors and skirting boards and fixing the windows that didn’t close properly. Chris also used a camera to determine that they didn’t have insulation above the bay window.
“I thought that as I keep recommending people to Loco Home, I should probably get some skin in the game and get a home assessment.”
Starting off
The flat had tiny holes throughout and big gaps in the wooden floorboards, which Calum sealed. He also filled any gaps in the skirting boards.
“There was cold and dust coming through, so we just sealed all the holes in the floors with floor sealant. It was painstakingly slow to do, but it looks fine. It does the job,” he says.
The windows in the flat had been hard to open since the couple moved in, and following the home assessment, they got someone to fix and realign all the windows.
“We had trouble getting someone to come and do that for six months. It was a bit of a nightmare. I’d put a deposit down, but they wouldn’t come. Eventually, they said they couldn’t do the job, and we got someone else to do it, who came within a week. Now, they’re much easier to open and have a much tighter seal.”
To remedy the lack of insulation above the bay window, Calum went into the roof and put insulation over the top.
“I pushed it down into the gap. There was spare insulation up in the roof lying about so I thought, it’s more use down there,” he says.
The couple also replaced their gas hob with an electric one. “It stopped working, so I thought, now is the time to move,” says Calum.
“It’s not really a question of technology; it’s about people’s willingness to participate and how it gets financed.”
During the home assessment, Chris advised that there is a limit to how much can be done in a shared space without the cooperation of neighbours. Later, Loco Home approached Calum to say they had some funding to explore a whole tenement retrofit plan.
Loco Home held meetings with the owners, conducted surveys and presented different options for improving the whole building.
“They went into flats on every floor to examine all the differences and get recommendations for each layer,” says Calum.
Subsequently, Loco Home has applied for funding from Community Energy Scotland to carry out further assessments in the block.
Calum says three or four owners within the tenement responded positively, with a few others not keen on participating.
“What we found in discussing this with Loco Home and the neighbours is that it’s not really a question of technology; it’s about people’s willingness to participate and how it gets financed,” says Calum. “It’s the social element more than anything technology-wise that will complicate matters.”
The project will develop proposals for a ten-year plan for the block that anticipates future maintenance and legal requirements while maximising opportunities to improve comfort, reduce both bills and environmental impact.
A separate complication for the block is scheduled stonework repair for the front of the tenement, with each flat asked to pay £5,000 to the factor.
“Essentially, the willingness to pay for anything at the moment is pretty limited given we’ve each been hit with a £5,000 bill,” says Calum.
However, cooperation around this issue could act as a catalyst for further collaboration around future combined projects.
“What we need to do is move factor, get a communal insurance policy, put together a maintenance fund, and have a tender process to get a surveyor in to reassess the works. If we can do all that this year, that would be pretty impressive,” says Calum.
“If we do manage to do those things, it will put us in a position where we can start thinking about these more significant works,” he adds.
(Words by Scott Skinner)
Loco Home’s Whole House Assessment services are helpful to anybody who is stuck with their retrofit or simply unsure where to start. To learn more, listen to Loco Home member Sarah Buchannan talk about her assessment on the Accelerate to Zero podcast, or click below.