The owner of renewable energy company Freewatt is on a mission to transform a 300-year-old Georgian home into an energy efficient blueprint for the future.
Based in Lincolnshire the house currently costs £12,000 a year to heat and power, a bill that Julian Patrick hopes to bring down by 80 percent.
The venture, which is likely to cost Patrick around £1 million, will include the installation of a 25kW solar array, a 50kW biomass boiler using locally sourced fuel or a 50kW heat pump array with ground source collectors, wall insulation, draft proof windows and low-energy lighting among other energy saving measures.
The project will also include installation of a computerised energy management system that will turn appliances on and off automatically to match when power is available from the solar panels.
“The objective is to help provide a blueprint for greening period-properties,” Patrick explained.
“There are thousands of beautiful period properties in the UK that must be preserved but they remain incredibly inefficient so are becoming financially unsustainable.
“Simple eco-measures applied in modern homes do not apply to period properties. Making a period property green is much more challenging and information on best-practice is harder to come by because there are so few examples in the UK.
“So we want to show, in practice, how this can be achieved and give people real examples of how even the oldest homes can be green, cost effective and sustainable and we are confident this will become the greenest period home in the UK.
“We are very much looking at this as a long term investment for the family. In reality the work will reap financial rewards within less than 10 years,” he concluded.
The project has already gained interest from English Heritage and Lincolnshire County Council.