So, today’s the day. After what seems to have been like months of waiting, we’re finally moving to our new home. Hurrah.
Ben and I are currently standing like lemmings in the kitchen twiddling our thumbs - our removal guys are super efficient and have already loaded 80% of our stuff into the first van and are now on to the annoyingly awkward stuff for the second. Upstairs is all cleaned and hoovered, so right now, I’m enjoying a chocolate hobnob in the sunshine. Yep, chocolate hobnobs and sunshine. What more could a girl want?!
Anyway, there is a point to this week’s post, I promise. The gas and electricity at our current house is supplied by Bulb - they promise 100% renewable electricity and 100% carbon neutral gas. And while their daily standing charge is more than the Big Six, we think it’s worth it for the sake of the planet. Plus we added solar panels to the house when we first moved in, allowing us to generate our own clean energy, too.
In the new house, we’ll be using the switching service provided by the Big Clean Switch (https://bigcleanswitch.org) to find the most competitive green electricity supplier for our needs. And what’s more, the new house doesn’t have gas-fired central heating and water: we’ve got an air-source heat pump instead and I’m super excited about it. I’ve been translating about this cleaner technology for a few years now and it’s brilliant to see it being used for residential purposes. These technological advances really do make living a cleaner, greener life far more accessible for us everyday folk.
For domestic systems, an air-source heat pump absorbs heat from the outside air and releases it inside the building as hot air within the heating system. In our case, it’ll be used for the underfloor heating downstairs and the radiators upstairs, and also provide us with hot water up to 80*C. A standard system can extract heat from the outside air down to temperatures of -15*C, which is pretty incredible, too.
We’re hoping to add solar panels onto the roof again in the not-too-distant future, but for now, we’re just waiting for that magic phone call to say the money has filtered through the banking system and we can start unloading the van. Exciting times ahead in the Worrell household!
Can anyone spot the air-source heat pump in the garden? (Photo by Slinn Residential)