29 Redland Hill (continued)

The house had 225mm thick solid brick walls, a timber roof and leaky metal single glazed windows and when we bought it, there was not a millimetre of insulation to be seen anywhere. 18 months later and the house has a lovely warm tea cosy of insulation (80mm polyisocyanurate) on all the walls, a double layer of insulation in the roof (we converted the loft into our architectural office so our commute was down to a minimum), floor insulation (with recycled newspaper material) and new double glazed low E-coated windows. As a result, our house uses about a third of the gas for heating consumed by the same size house (accounting for the fact that we also work in the house all day).