Advice approaching ECO4 as Landlord?

mnbvcxz

Hello, I'm helping with a tenanted house that in theory would be eligible for the ECO4 grant. Its all a little confusing though.

I can see it is funded by the electricity companies. And you can sign up on their webpages directly. Then there are lots of sales companies who want help you, often through cold calling. Then there are business's that actually do the work.

But how they all fit together I'm not sure? How best to approach it.

The house is a rural detached solid walled, single glazed, economy 7 house. Not the sort of house that always reacts well to modern materials, and a tough match for a heat pump.

Ideally just getting a brace of new hi tech storage heaters would be nice. I'm afraid we are too cheap to pay the £6000 for something that might rapidly become obsolete... And they get lots of epc points and minimum disruption.

I'm a little worried some people may insist on the maximum improvements. If you rip all the wall boards off to insulate the irregular walls you will have to redecorate, re-carpet and probably rewire at which case it all starts to get out of control. Not sure the shady roof would sadly welcome solar panels, and a heat pump might be an improvement but the odds are slightly stacked against it. And can you trust a random group of builders basically gutting a house? 

So any insights before I give in and just fill in the form of Ocopus's website and see what happens?

Thanks 

FreeBear

mnbvcxz said: The house is a rural detached solid walled, single glazed, economy 7 house. Not the sort of house that always reacts well to modern materials, and a tough match for a heat pump.

Get those windows replaced by decent double (or even triple) glazed units, and do the doors while you're at it. Get the loft insulated with ~300mm of fibreglass or mineral wool. Those two measures alone will make a huge difference to the heat requirements of the property.

Insulating the walls (with the appropriate materials) will reduce heat loss further, assuming you have plugged all the cold draughts during the first round of improvements.

Just slapping in storage heaters is a waste of time and money (certainly for the tenants that will be paying for the electricity). Invest in thermal upgrades, then you can look at a heat pump (which will be cheaper to run).