DIT

Project rational

We believe the major barriers to homeowners of making insulation improvements (that are needed to get the homes to off gas status) are Cost and Confidence. Cost is pretty straight forward, for-profit installers are expensive. Confidence is two fold, they don't trust the installers to take care/do quality work and they don't trust their own DIY skills on DIY

There are a number of things we can do to bring the cost down. We can use a storage for any surplus material from complete projects to be offered at a lower rate to the next homeowner for their project. We can buy from a trade account to get a better rate for the residents. Homeowners can save on labour costs by doing the installs themselves. We can teach the theory of what insulation to use where and why. We can teach the skills of cutting and placing the insulation correctly. We can supervise and support during installs.

For confidence, we not yet but will be soon qualified to the same level as the for-profit installers. Because a lot of the work will be done by the resident they will need to have a deep understanding of how heat and moisture move in order to understand why insulation is placed in a certain way that aligns with best practice. This depth of knowledge allows then to gauge a well done job from a not well done job. Having the job being done by residents also means they know that the layer is consistent because they were the one to put it there. Finally unlike most for-profit installers, we use a high end thermal camera to find and fix thermal bridging issues as we work.

Service Scope

CEB staff work in a facilitating, training, technical advising and quality assurance capacity primarily. We are happy to help with the labour of installing to the degree we are able.

Fee Structure

Our time will be funded but a donation to grow the reach and effectiveness of CEB as a non-porfit in Birmingham working to lower local emissions and energy poverty while improving health and comfort of residents is very much encouraged. The materials would be paid for by the homeowner and we will advice the number of days you will need to make available to do this work.

Do it together (Dit) Retrofit Goal

Retrofitting homes in Birmingham to ‘off gas’ status through a ‘Do It Together’ approach with a whole house, community led, non-profit and skills building as core pillars.

Breakdown of Goal

‘Retrofitting’ - Retrofit comes from two words, retroactively and fitting. In this this context it refers to the fitting of of materials and technologies into a homes retroactively (anytime after it’s building was complete).

‘Homes’ because with 40% of the UK workforce doing some form of work from home. Homes are no longer just homes, they are offices. Helping a person makes their homes space healthier for both living and working. The same benefits are also experienced by any dependants or co-occupants.

‘‘off gas’ status’ because we believe the phrase ‘if you believe in net zero for the country and the world is important you should want net zero for your property’ is a powerful message around patriotism, global unity, environmentalism and personal responsibility. Operationally, the closer a home gets to ‘off gas’ the more addressed the problems of risk of energy poverty, carbon emissions and household health are. This should appeal to public organisations. Stoping short of off gas status is unacceptable because it leaves the homes at unnecessary risk of the problems discussed recurring.

‘Do It Together’ approach because for-profits have been deemed unacceptable due to it’s fundamental incentive to rush through work, negatively affecting quality of work in the home and the quality of communication/confidence within the homeowners. And the prohibitive prices that have come from a small number of unnecessarily professionalised/specialised people that insist only they can place blocks of insulations.

DIY is not viable to solve for mass off gassing of homes due to lack of home owner’s confidence in themselves and the limited time they have to find and ingest the necessary information to do a good job by themselves Therefore we propose a hybrid non-profit approach that is part skilled and part unskilled. Part publicly funded, part privately funded.

‘whole house’ - Off gassing/retrofitting a home well requires that you keep in mind and potentially amend many different elements of a home. This is because a home is a system through which moisture and heat move. Changing one element of the system can have affects in other areas of the system. If you are not to accept the cost assessing and improving a home as a system you can cause substantial issues that would cost more to fix than if you had approached it correctly the first time.

‘community led’ - We move at the speed of trust. Trust in this context is made from a mix of the homeowners confidence in their knowledge of the subject matter and their confidence in your motives and reliability in our organisation(s).

‘Non-profit’ because it allows for a slowness and thoroughness of communication and work that is required to have continued homeowner buy in.

‘skills building’ because we don’t want to give homeowners fish, we want to teach them how to fish. We want to leave a community that has fishing advocates that talk to others about the merits and risks or fishing, they will normalise fishing and maybe motivate others to seek out knowledge of or support with doing some fishing of their own.

Service Process

Identifying homes for DIT support

Homes that collectively earn more than £36K (ECO4 state support eligibility criteria) but that individually likely earn less than a living wage.

Homes that can not afford a ‘Furbnow’ style for-profit retrofit.

Homes that are interested in doing the work themselves because they believe the benefits outweigh the risks.

Homeowners that can not afford the cost of insulating with a for-profit installer but do not qualify for state to pay for or subsidise the insulating to be done self refer to CEB. Especially family homes due to the benefits of the density and mental health benefits of multi generational homes. Homes intending on getting to off gas status will be prioritised.

A Home Retrofit Plan is developed with the resident. Together it is decided, what is to be done where and by who. A cost estimates for the stages is developed.

If a layout change to improve density is needed. This should be developed and agreed.

A contract is signed with the resident detailing the order of operations, who is doing the work, who is paying for what and so on.

Work begins

Each stage will have an external party investigate and sign off the quality of work.

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