Original subtitles

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I'm Kieran McCarthy,

and I've been working as a building engineer for nearly 30 years.

I get asked all the time, how do I save money on energy costs?

Well, retrofitting is all over the news lately,

And in this series, I'm travelling around Ireland,

checking out homes that are getting energy upgrades.

Look at the walls.

That dark blue is the coldest.

This is typically what I'd expect to see in an old house.

With prices only going up and the planet under pressure,

more and more people are saving money

and energy in their homes by taking on the retrofit challenge.

I'll be showing you what's actually doable

and what grants are out there to help.

From heat pumps to HVAC,

I'll break down the technical jargon

and it makes sense of all the retrofit lingo

so it's easy to follow.

You're just bamboozled with all the decisions that need to be made.

So come with me as we retrofit Ireland

and discover how you can reduce your energy costs.

This is Heat My Home.

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Today, I'm on my way to Dublin to meet up with John

and Isabelle Fallon, who are getting ready to carry out

an extensive retrofit on their 1930s mid terrace house

in Clontarf.

The couple carried out some renovations on the house

when they bought it back in 2003,

but now they want to improve the energy rating

of their home from a C2 to a very healthy A3.

They have enlisted the help of a one-stop shop contractor

to take on the task of completing all of the work.

We didn't want to rush the project.

We wanted to make sure that we were comfortable

with what was being done.

It's a pretty large investment in the house,

and that allowed us to do that.

When we got the house, we did what was appropriate at the time,

but there was no sense of energy efficiency,

and things have moved along so much.

And we're really looking at this house and what is needed

to maintain that and looking ahead for the next 20 years.

Yeah, and we want the house to be cosy for ourselves,

but we also want to do a bit for the environment.

Like most people, we have a gas boiler,

and even a good few years ago,

we actually replaced the gas boiler,

and we're looking ahead and going,

Well, we'd like to remove gas from the equation.

We'd like to be able to move to electric.

And the nice thing is it is possible,

even in an old house like this,

to bring it up to modern standards

and actually get to an A-rated house.

We're very attached to the house

and really the neighbourhood and the area that we live in.

It has all the amenities that we want.

We're close to the city, so we really enjoy the house,

and we both work from home,

and you'd like it to be that little bit cosier.

In the wintertime, it's fine to put on an extra layer or to know,

Oh, that room is going to be really cold in the morning.

It'll warm up later in the day.

But I think there's really no real reason why the house can't be

that bit cosier and that bit warmer and that bit more comfortable.

And we're looking forward to that at the end of the project.

The exterior of this house which is a classic 1930s red brick finish.

Although it's not a protected structure,

John and Isabelle are making no alterations

to the road-facing façade,

and I'm curious to hear their plans for this cracking period building.

So this is your beautiful home in Clontarf.

Yeah, this is the house.

The brick is the first thing you see, isn't it? It is stunning.

And of course, when you're doing a retrofit job on a house like this,

you want to keep all the old character. Absolutely.

And even when we did the original renovations,

we didn't really want to change the character the house.

So the challenge for ye is to bring it from a C up to an A

whilst maintaining the old features and staying in the house for as

long as you can while the works are happening.

Yeah, I think that's it. Very good.

Well, I think we've seen enough here.

Will you show me inside? Yeah, great.

I'll follow you, I'll you.

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This is a fine room, isn't it?

This is your day-to-day living room, I guess, is it?

Yeah, this is one of the biggest features of the house

is to have this double living room

and a little bit of height in the ceilings and the nice bay window.

What's the plan here?

I'm conscious that on the external wall,

you have the red brick on the outside.

How are you insulating the wall here?

Yeah, the big thing here is that we're going to need

to insulate on the inside of those walls.

So that's going to bring things in a little bit.

And we've got a additional complication where

part of this wall in here is actually facing the exterior.

So we're going to have to insulate all the way up,

even to this wall here.

And so this is the kitchen living space.

Yeah, and this is actually a west-facing room,

which is lovely in the evening.

But in the morning, this is one of the colder spots in the house.

And what changes are you making in this room?

Well, the big change here is we're going to visually see,

is going to be the windows and the doors.

So we're going to move to aluminium windows and doors.

Isabel, are you sad to say goodbye to the French doors?

No, I like those doors,

but I'm looking forward to even more light coming

with just two big doors and then having the easier

entry/exit point when we leave the house.

Well, these are the benefits of upgrading a house by deep

retrofitting that you get all these opportunities to upgrade little

parts of the house that were good but could be better in the future.

Another area that's up for a future upgrade

is outside at the back of the house,

which John is targeting for external installation.

So I suppose what we're seeing here, you have an old rough cast

render, and that's where the new external installation

will be going. Yes.

We're going to have that paired down, a blast down some way,

and then we'll have more of a smooth render on top.

External wall installation involves fixing a layer

of rigid insulation to the outside of a building,

then plastering with two layers of reinforced base coat

and sealing with a weather-resistant finish.

This system significantly reduces heat loss

through poorly insulated walls.

It also helps prevent internal condensation

and mould occurring as the wall is protected from external elements

like wind, rain, and cold temperatures.

The Fallon's plan is an ambitious one,

and I've been juggling some numbers

to see what this retrofit is going to cost.

Right, let's have a look at these figures.

So the total cost of retrofit works

before grants is a significant 102,116 euro.

Yeah, it's a large number.

So hopefully, you get to the number after the grant.

But that's not the money you're paying today.

The total cost of retrofit works

after grants is well down at 81,716 euro.

Still a very a considerable sum.

So you'll be looking at the payback time

to get value out of this investment.

Yeah, for us, it's a long-term investment.

I don't know that we're looking directly at the payback.

We're looking at all the comfort factors

and other factors and what we're doing for the environment.

And I'm looking forward to my super cosy house,

and I'll be feeling sometimes like I am in France,

although I'm in the depth of winter in Dublin.

That'll be a pleasant change.

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Clearly, this is a beautiful old house with period features.

There'll be a lot of care and attention needed

by the contractors when they're fitting

all the new deep retrofit measures.

We know we're fitting internal drylining behind

the front elevation wall with the red brick.

When this drylining is being fitted,

we have to take care of all the old cornerst works and,

of course, all the architrave

of works around the original doors and windows.

We also know on the rear elevation, there's external insulation,

and we need to be very careful how all that's dealt with.

So it's a big challenge.

It's a unique, beautiful house,

and I'm looking forward to calling back

to make sure all this works out okay.

It's day one of John and Isabelle's retrofit festival in Clontarf,

and the contractors are the headline act.

They're replacing the old plastic frame windows with new aluminium

triple-glaze units to help keep the heat in and the noise out.

The retrofit crew are a well-oiled machine, and for John,

all of this sudden activity is a bit of a shock to the system.

A little bit nervous, because it's the house you're living in.

You have all your personal belongs, all your stuff there.

And we've been planning this for months and months,

and now it's actually the first day that there's real work

starting on the house.

As you see, there's quite a lot of things happening in one go.

We've done as much preparation as we can,

but we're handed over now to the crew to do their job,

and hopefully it goes really well today.

John may be worried about his windows,

but project manager David has done this countless times in the past.

The window fitting is such a big job.

People think it's going to take days on end,

but you can be in and out of a project within a day.

Mainly in this house, they're all mechanically fixed,

so it's four screws holding them in and a little bit of silicone,

which we're able to strip out quite quickly.

The fitting takes a little bit more time

because we have to get them plumb and level and nice and neat.

And then the finishing off of the windows,

sealing them and stuff like that takes a bit longer in the process.

Alongside the windows,

the front door is also being upgraded

to a hardwood model that replicates the style of the original,

which includes a unique feature that was Isabelle's idea,

a pair of specially commissioned stained glass panels.

Yeah, we felt that was the only piece

where we got a bit of freedom.

So we worked with a designer in Meath,

and we gave them the brief, and that's what it came up with.

And we had different iterations,

where first we thought we might

have the same image in the two panes,

and then we thought we want an extension of it,

but it looks beautiful.

On the ground floor, the patio doors are going in.

Up on the roof, they're preparing for the arrival

of the first of the solar panels.

The solar is the icing on the cake, really, when it comes to a house

like this because you're getting a payback.

You're actually generating electricity.

We put the heat pump in,

and our hope is that the solar is going to really help us

to be able to run that heat pump very cost-effectively.

And it's one of those things

we're going to see a benefit of most quickly.

And the nice thing is with solar panels is

there's no planning involved,

and it's becoming more normal as you just glance

across any of the houses across the neighbourhood,

you're going to see probably one in 10 houses

now have solar panels up,

and that's increasing all the time.

So it's becoming just a normal feature.

So remind me now,

I'm going to get morning sun

in here because I've got this really direct coming

on onto this roof. Exactly.

And then I'm going to have some more panels on the back, isn't it?

More panels on the back.

So we have panels on the existing roof on the back,

and then we have some on the extension as well.

So we have plenty there.

Originally, when we were looking at this,

we were initially only thinking we'd put the panels

on the back of the house because

we have west-facing, which gets a lot of sun,

and we have a South-facing slope.

And then subsequently, you guys suggested

we also put some panels here in the front.

We didn't even know you could split the panels around.

They were so flexible.

So that was a big plus for us.

A straightforward roof would be ideal that you can have

all the panels in one row.

But in a intricate house like this,

where we can split it between three separate roofs, it's great.

But we've got the maximum we could get here.

Even in a terraced house with an unusual roof,

we've managed to get 10 panels up,

which is going to give us quite a bit of power, actually.

Definitely. Yeah.

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Today, I'm back in Dublin to catch up with John and Isabelle Fallon,

who are in the middle of an extensive retrofit

to their 1930s mid-terrace house in Clontarf.

The house has seen a parade of contractors

on site getting stuck into the various elements of this big project.

And I have to say I'm impressed.

Isabelle. Good morning, Kieran. John.

Hi, Kieran. How are you? Yeah, very good. You're flying it.

We really are, yeah.

I think we're only 10 days in, but It's been team after team,

and we seem to be making enormous progress.

I can hear lots of activity on the outside anyway,

so I'm very excited to see what's happening.

Will you show me around? Yeah, sure.

Lead the way. Let's go in. Lead the way.

Well, they have an awful lot done here, haven't they?

I see all the dry lining is up

running and plastering and and all complete.

Yeah, I mean, this is the room that probably has

the most change because we've got dry lining here to the front,

but we also had some exterior wall over here.

So we had to dry line both of those.

And now we're looking at the dimensions.

But actually, the room supports it well,

and the guys have said that they're going to be able to match

in the doorway as well as a bit of a finish.

And it's actually starting to look like our room again.

Moving through the house,

I can't help noticing there have been a few

very significant changes since my last visit.

Are these new radiators, Isabelle?

Yeah, they're all new radiators in the house.

They had to be changed to be in compliant with the whole UV value.

And we really liked our previous one,

so I'm happy to see that they're generally similar.

They're quite sleek-looking, aren't they?

Yeah.

At the back of the house,

they are on the home stretch with the external insulation.

They have the bulk of the main wall insulation in place.

But now you get to all the finessing details.

The thing about external insulation

is it's not that complicated a process.

I mean, you're putting on 100, 125 millimetres of insulation

onto the outside face of your wall.

But in reality, if you don't have it all carefully considered

around all these tricky details around your sliding doors

and all that things. It would look like a dog's dinner.

But it's a relief to see that they really have worked it carefully

around here because that's what will show up at the end of the day.

The work continues in Clontarf, and I'm taking the opportunity

to head back to Cork on a visit to the

HQ of the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Over the past couple of years,

and with the aid of available grants,

the organisation has upgraded its energy systems

to be more efficient and cost-effective.

I'm meeting CEO Tim O'Mahony

to find out more about their retrofit journey.

Tim, thanks for inviting me around. You're very welcome.

Tim, tell me, where are we right now

and what amazing work have you done recently?

So We're here at Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind,

where we enable people with vision impairment and families of children

with autism to live more independent

and mobile lives through our dog services.

What drove you to take a new approach to the buildings?

We have clients here that stay with us when they're on class,

and so their rooms would go from the extreme when the heating

was on to the very cold when the heating was off.

So there was plenty of opportunity to look at bringing a more

consistent environment for everyone.

I'd love to see the inside and see how it all works.

Do you want to show me around? I will indeed.

I'll lead the way. Thank you.

This is a client bedroom.

Our clients stay here when they're on site for classes.

The main upgrades that were here was the building management system.

It allows us to regulate the temperature more closely

to ensure that there's less extremes between hot and cold.

And what benefits have you seen in these rooms now

from the measures that you've already installed?

Our clients have commented that the environment is more comfortable,

more consistent, and just less extreme.

This is our kennel building.

It's one of the oldest buildings on the site.

So there's been insulation installed in the walls,

insulation in the roof, so it makes it more of a cocoon

and more comfortable for our dogs when they're here inside.

This is an autism assessment unit.

So when the child and their family would come on site to consider

the suitability of a dog match, it's in here, they would come.

So this is very child friendly.

So the child can relax and play and be introduced

to their new potential pal.

It has also benefited from the building management system,

which allows the temperature to be regulated.

So you want to create the conditions at home so

that the partnership can be as relaxed as it would be

in a family environment.

You can measure the savings,

but you can't put a value on the comfort for our clients

and for our staff and our dogs when they're here on site,

which are absolutely far out of the way,

probably the individual monetary savings from a comfort

level and benefit to the charity in the long term.

Tell me, what were your heating and energy bills like before the works?

The gas and electricity costs here before the upgrade works was

around 115, 120,000 per annum.

That is a staggering figure.

It was literally evaporating through the roof

because of the age of the building.

I suppose given our backgrounds,

we look to spend as much of our resources on the front line.

We have a reduced carbon footprint,

reduced energy costs by 30 percent,

so It's a win-win on all fronts, the environment, our clients,

the charity, and our future.

This place runs around the clock, so making it warmer,

more energy-efficient, and easier to manage

doesn't just help the environment.

It helps the people and the dogs who rely on it every day.

Thanks to a full energy upgrade,

they can spend less on bills

and more on training dogs that change lives.

Back in Clontarf, the retrofit of John and Isabelle's

1930s red brick house is entering its final stages.

The solar panels are in place and the attic insulation is being

rolled out, so John is looking forward to getting his house back.

The main construction work is really behind us,

and what's happening today is we've got plumbers and electrics being

closed out, so second fix of those elements,

the heat pump getting ready for commissioning,

and then the whole electrical element, so all the neat electrics.

We did have some controls on the house,

so we did have it fairly well-controlled,

but I love to see the latest technology.

So give me some of these techie toys,

and I'm very much at home.

So I'll be learning a little bit about those.

But again, I imagine they're going super easy to use,

and they'll just run themselves.

To make sure John gets the most out of his new tech toys,

electrical supervisor Jake is up in the attic

connecting the indoor controls

that will run the new heating system.

This will control the outputs for the motorised valves,

which will allow the hot water to pass through to the specific zones.

So the house will be split into two zones.

So we'll have an upstairs zone and a downstairs zone.

This will be able to read then, downstairs is at 20 degrees.

Your target temperature is 22 degrees,

so it will knock on the heat pump to slowly heat

the rooms back up to 22 degrees in that downstairs zone.

For us, we can see the progress, which is really good.

The guys have been really good at just keeping the project

on schedule, and it looks like,

fingers crossed, we'll be able

to move back in this weekend. That's the hope.

At the start of summer, John and Isabelle Fallon

began the retrofit on their 1930s red brick house in Clontarf in Dublin.

They wanted to make it more energy-efficient

and environmentally friendly whilst also keeping its 1930s charm.

The installation of triplet-laced windows, solar panels on the roof,

and internal and external wall installation means the couple are

well on their way to achieving energy independence.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the results

of all all the hard work.

It's great to see your house looking, I won't say unchanged,

because there is subtle changes.

Tell me, how has things been?

Well, we're delighted to be back in and everything finished.

So it's a relief from our point of view.

But yes, the front of the house was very important to us to try to keep

the character of the house and to be able to achieve what we

wanted to do from the retrofit.

And Isabelle, how are you after the whole journey?

The whole retrofit went very well.

A few snags here and there, but we're getting there.

Well, I'm really excited to see how it looks on the inside.

Will you show me around? Yeah, let's go.

Sure. Come on in. Great.

So this room is actually the room that's had the most

work done to it.

And yet when you walk into it, you We didn't necessarily know that.

And the windows are the centrepiece of it.

In terms of the windows, we've got the bay.

We had all of that stripped back to the brickwork,

and then with the insulation put in.

I see you have a radiator over here in the corner.

Did it ever come up in conversation as an to go

for under floor heating.

Yeah, I guess with our house, one of the main features

of the house is that it's an old house

and we got the original floorboards here.

So for us to do under floor heating would mean

destroying all of the floors and taking them up,

and it would have turned a retrofit project

into a a teacher construction project.

But for us, the rads were taking up the same space as we had before,

so there's no detriment from our point of view to have the rads.

The first thing I'm noticing in your kitchen

is there's so much more light.

Yeah, well, this is the area we've had most glass and the new windows,

because they're all the slimmer profile

and you get that more light in.

Isabelle, how do you find this space to come in to

kow in the morning? No, it's really nice.

Actually, the rads have barely been on.

Even without them, the house already felt cosy

and then the extra light makes it, I guess, warming as well.

The solar panels are playing their part in heating the home,

and there are other terrific external touches.

Straight away on the outside,

I can see the beautiful blue sliding doors,

but I'm also drawn to your external installation.

It's barely noticeable.

Yeah, well, it's the whole back of the house then.

It's got a refresh, I suppose.

So everything looks fresh and new,

and we've got a really clean finish.

When I see the outdoor unit of your heat pump

is now raised up onto your side wall of your extension.

We're getting used to the fact you don't really see it there unless

you come back around the side of the house.

And it's interesting that such a unit is fitting neatly

in against the side of the house.

The transformation is amazing.

And now that the project is complete,

there is one thing I'm really curious about.

When it comes to the BER, you were originally a C2, which,

as we all remember from our exam days, was a reasonably good result.

Where are you now?

Yeah, well, our objective was to get to an A rating.

Like anyone, you want an A rating,

you don't want something less than an A rating,

but we didn't know where we would land.

We were really delighted when we got the cert back,

so we got an A1 rating, the highest possible rating for the house.

Yeah.

That's incredible.

When you consider that you haven't taken up the floors

and you haven't had to go to the expense of really driving home

a high level of air tightness and all that.

I was thinking it might be an A3, maybe an A2, if you were lucky,

but to get an A1 is an excellent result.

Yeah, from our point of view, to take on the project and just,

I suppose, really to see that you can, in an old house,

go from whatever the rating is before

and get to an A1 rating without destroying the house.

I think it's testament to the materials

and the work that can be done these days.

John and Isabelle's investment of their time

and finances has paid off with a well-earned A1 rating.

Today, it's time to throw open their doors to family and friends

to share the new cosy home

they love and hope their guests will love it too.

The house feels great, modern, stylish, nice colours.

Very jealous of their heating.

And maybe their low-cost energy bills from now on.

What's really lovely is there's a lot of modern installation work

that's been done, a lot of retrofit work,

but the original features are all still here.

I'd like to congratulate John and Isabelle

on their wonderful achievement.

They've brought their house up to an A1 energy rating.

So congratulations, and I wish you many happy

and energy-efficient years in your new home.

Thank you very much, Kieran.

(Applause)

Relieved and actually chuffed now that we can enjoy our cosy home.

We're doing a bit for the environment,

and I guess it seems strange today that everybody's saying, Oh,

but I don't see any difference, but I guess that's a compliment.

Now that the weather is a bit cooler,

we can see the heating starting to come on a little bit.

We can feel how cosy the house is.

After living here for more than 20 years,

John and Isabelle knew exactly what they wanted,

a warmer, more efficient home that still felt like theirs.

Retrofitting a red brick terrace like this was never going to be easy,

especially when the façade had to stay exactly as it was.

But they made it happen.

The result is a comfortable,

low-energy home that's ready for the next 20 years.

Subtitling RTÉ 2025.