One dad is revealing how he had to insulate his own home with cardboard after a heat pump installation pushed his household energy bills to £1,000 per month.
Nigel Cleall, 52, from Martley, Worcester was forced to take this action by being given an open-source heat pump which has been pushed by the UK Government.
According to the lorry driver, the installation was badly completed due to being held up by two bricks and failed to heat his home which resulted in black mould in his son’s bedroom.
To address the issue, Mr Cleall covered the walls and ceiling of his house with cardboard which was purchased for £1 from eBay.
Since then, he has spent an additional £140 on polystyrene wall tiles which he has placed over the cardboard in his bedroom, living room and hallway.
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As a result of his decision, Mr Cleall has now been able to half the energy bills off his ground floor flat thanks to doing his own insulation.
He explained: “If I had the heat air source pump system it would have cost me £1,000 a month, that’s why I didn’t have my heating on. I used an electric heater, which still cost about £500 a month,
“There was nothing between my flat and the flat above, so it would just leave the flat. I paid about £140 for the insulation tiles and put them in the hallway, the living room and my bedroom on top of the cardboard that I’d already put up.
“It’s now that warm in the flat that I noticed condensation on my bedroom window the other day, which only happens when it’s hotter inside than it is outside. I’ve been here for about 12 years and never noticed condensation because the heat has never stayed in.”
Based on Mr Cleall’s smart meter, switching his heating on would cost him around £1.92 an hour.
If this was allowed to run for 20 hours, which the father-of-one believes it would on account of his poor insulation, his daily bill would be around £39 or around £1,170 a month.
Due to this debacle, Mr Cleall is urging Platform Housing to provide him with adequate insulation or he will deny them access to his home.
Mr Cleall added: “I have given Platform a deadline to come in and sort this. They have until the end of December, and if not, I will not be giving them access to my home to carry out any other work.
“They promised they were going to do all the work and gave me a date in April 2022 and then again in March 2023, but they never did. I said enough is enough, you’ve got until December 31 to do the work. If not, forget it. Enough is enough.”
In response, Marion Duffy, Platform’s chief operations officer said: “Mr Cleall’s home, along with all the properties in his building, are due for major retrofit energy efficiency works to be carried out, as part of the grant we secured from the government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund.
“We understand Mr Cleall’s concerns so have arranged to visit him again, to ensure that we can offer him our continued support and explain the benefits of the improvement works, which we anticipate will start in March.”
