In 2007 Steve Ouseley and his wife purchased ‘Woodbine’, a two bedroom cottage in west Wales, with a view to extending the property to create a three bedroom home with an additional bathroom on the first floor. However, the build didn’t have the most successful of starts:

“Planning permission for the extension was obtained in 2008 so we moved into a caravan on site and made a start on the work. After six weeks of hard work stripping off render, removing services and the staircase, ripping up the floor and demolishing the lean to the house became very unstable and, well, collapsed!”

“The house was eventually pulled down and we started to rebuild to the original footprint with the addition of an extension, only to be told that we didn’t have planning permission to do this. We immediately re-applied and the council approved our plans within eight weeks. The following fifteen months were spent building our home.”

“We did quite a bit of research on the internet into renewable products and underfloor heating and received a number of quotes from different companies. We were keen to have an integrated solution of warm water underfloor heating and a ground source heat pump as we liked the idea of running a system at a lower temperature, thus costing us less! We found Nu-Heat to be a decent and supportive company so we chose to install products from their range.”

“We have a large field at the rear of the property so we took advantage of the ground loop method to harvest the energy from the ground, rather than boreholes. We have a well ring to access the manifold and a small plant room within the house to accommodate the unit and controls for both the heat pump and underfloor heating.”

“I fitted the underfloor heating with guidance from Paul Bromley of Green Warmth Ltd, Paul then carried out the commissioning of the system and the installation of the heat pump. The whole process went very well and Green Warmth were very helpful. The standard of the products from Nu-Heat is impressive; they are of a very high quality. I have already recommended both companies and will continue to do so.”

“We chose limestone tiles for the majority of the ground floor, with carpet in the living room and study and carpet laid on top of a timber floor upstairs. We really like the heat that is produced by underfloor heating, it is much more evenly distributed than a standard domestic heating system and there are no intrusive radiators.”

“There is very little maintenance of the system once set up and the controls are easy to use but being an electrician I am keen to monitor the electrical usage of the heat pump so I have installed an inline metre. So far the results are good but I would like to review this over a two year period, to include a couple of winters and then compare them with the heating costs of the house as it originally stood. Overall I am very pleased with the system we chose to install.”

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