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Home Survey

As part of the Community Powerdown project it was imperative to gain some insight into the state of housing, heating and energy use across the islands homes.  To this end a household survey was undertaken to assess the type of structure, heating systems used and where possible to estimate fuel mix and spend.  The Energy Savings Trust Home Energy Check (HEC)was used with additional questions over fuel spending and mix.  The HEC was selected as it was able to be completed in about 20mins and once submitted the householder would receive a basic energy report with tips as to what they could do to increase the energy efficiency of their home and reduce fuel bills.

In all 132 homes were surveyed.  Not all these homes submitted the additional energy spend breakdown but it was felt that a representative sample was provided.

In summary, the survey sample was a fairly even spread across building periods with one third of homes being built before 1900, typically in stone.  Homes were typically storey and a half with a significant number of bungalows and a few flats. Only two properties were on two floors and one on three.

Structures were assessed into rough thirds as stone built, timber frame and cavity/solid block.  However, later work on insulation has indicated that many homes thought to be cavity wall are in fact timber frame ( for cavity wall insulation).

Loft insulation was assessed and only 10% of homes surveyed were assessed as having a depth of 250mm (10”) or more (the recommended depth at time of suvey).  Most significantly 67% of homes were assessed as having 100mm (4”) or less (below the qualifying depth for assisted upgrade at the time of survey).

Double glazing was measured at 77% of homes with complete double glazing but a concern was that 8% of homes still had no double glazing whatever.

Heating

The vast majority of homes have central heating but 5% still relied upon open fires/room heaters, although some central heating is still powered by a back boiler to an open fire or multi-fuel stove.

Almost half of centrally heated homes were using off-peak night storage heaters and 36% were using oil boilers.  6% of homes were using boilers fueld by a mixture of wood, coal and anthracite.  One home was reliant on Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) for heating.

85% of homes had at least one alternative heating fuel with about half each using peak electricity, coal and wood.  This reflects the need for alternatives due to reasonably common failures in the electricity network (which disables both electric systems and oil boilers).

Fuel Spending

The average total fuel spend (based on 71% of homes responding to the full survey) was £1,609 per annum.  The range of spending was from £500 to £4.052 p.a.

While it was difficult to assess fuel spend against income it would appear that the average spend was just over the fuel poverty threshold at 10.71% of household income indicating that upto half the homeowners on Mull & Iona would qualify for the Social Tariff for electricity.  On a home-by-home basis in the survey 36% homes were deemed to qualify for Social Tariff without considering mitigation.

Note: Social Tariff has been introduced by the UK Government where homes spending more than 10% of their income after tax on energy should get a reduced rate for electricity and mains gas, providing their supplier supports the Social Tariff.  One mitigation is that the 10% is to be based on what they ‘should be spending’ rather than actual spend.  So homes that can show they are failing to adequately heat their home should have the ‘missing’ spend taken into account.  While anecdotally it can be confirmed that some homes are failing to heat adequately there was no measure of this as part of this survey.

Spending on fuel was analysed by primary heating fuel.  This gave a list as follows in terms of highest spend by primary fuel.

Oil                                           £1,810

Bottled Gas                           £1,652

Electricity                               £1,522

Coal                                        £1,445

Wood                                     £1,103

Note: that these figures relate to annual spend on all fuels and take no account of size of home, cost of heating systems or mixture of secondary fuels.

If you wish to participate in the Home Energy Check online, visit the Energy Savings Trust web site. http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/proxy/view/full/165/homeenergycheck

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