Boosting energy efficiency in a quirky Victorian home – without losing its charm

It’s easy to see why Will and Becky Cawthorne fell in love with their characterful Victorian home in Weston-super-Mare.

It’s a period property packed with personality, set high on a hillside on the north side of the bay in the Somerset resort, with gorgeous views out over the pier and sea.

Will says, “The view’s great no matter what the weather. It’s nice when it’s sunny, but it’s interesting even when it’s foggy. We’re very lucky.”

Back to his roots

Will explains, “I’m from this part of the world, and we decided to come back this way in 2015 after almost 20 years living and working in and around London.

“It was my wife’s idea. She wanted to live by the sea. This was the second house we saw. She walked in and said, ‘This is it.’ And the rest is history.”

Wonderful Weston

Weston is a quaint seaside town with a characteristic architectural style all of its own.

This is something that has been recognised by Historic England, which has undertaken a special project to document the resort’shistoric buildings.

The Cawthornes’ house, Craigfoot, is characteristic of the properties built for affluent Victorians when the town was expanding rapidly in the middle of the 19th century.

Hans Price

It was designed by acclaimed architect Hans Price, who worked mainly in Weston and was responsible for creating the town’s distinctive look.

It is high-ceilinged and packed with period features; a four-bed semi-detached home created when a substantial mid-19th-century villa was divided in two in the 1930s.

Price’s distinctive Weston look combines local Mendip limestone walls, with Bath stone quoins and detailing in an eclectic mix of historical styles, from gothic to Moorish, Classical to Flemish.

He designed hundreds of buildings in the town including many prominent public buildings and lots of private homes. Craigfoot fits the mould perfectly – or it would if there were a mould, but every Price building is unique.

Courtyard garden

To the front of the house is an elegant terrace with Bath stone balustrade and stunning views over the sea, to the rear is a half acre of woodland.

At the side is a rather special courtyard-style walled garden, with, at the back, an attractive stone retaining wall, and to the front a beautiful high stone wall decorated across the top with gothic-style quatrefoils.

Will says, “We never get a frost in there. It never falls below four or five degrees.”

Worlebury Hill

The house sits on Worlebury Hill, site of an Iron Age hillfort, in an area full of large Price-designed properties.

Will says, “We understand our house was built for the mother of the owner of the much larger house next door, which is now divided into flats.

“If you ever get too big for your boots, you can always get taken down a notch by remembering that you’re living in what is effectively a glorified Granny flat,” he laughs.

New garage

The house is reached up a sloping curving driveway and set of steep steps.

The couple inherited a 1930s garage – built at the time the house was divided – that was on its last legs.

The perilous state of the structure meant that it had to be top priority when it came to making improvements to the property, and they have recently replaced it with a new limestone garage, surmounted with a terrace, and playful, round parking area.

The garage matters more than it might at other properties because, at the foot of the slope, it is the first thing you see when you arrive at the house.

Keeping it in keeping

Will explains, “I wanted to go for what I think of as a Grand Designs-style ultra-modern minimalist ‘box’.

“But we’re in a conservation area here, and we’ve got an Article 4 Direction, and the planners like things to be in keeping.

“So, it wouldn’t fly. We appealed twice, but, in the end, we had to go with local limestone and decorative cornerstones, in a style that matches the house.

“Luckily, we managed to acquire a load of suitable stone from Network Rail who had knocked down a Victorian signal box.”

The terrace railings were made locally in period style based on designs from 1855.

Keeping out the damp

Another basic that Will had to tackle before he could get to the sustainability upgrades was the walls.

He says, “Pretty much everything we’ve done to the house since we moved in has been outside because we’re outdoorsy people – we like to spend time outside.

“Plus, that was where the work needed doing – there’s no point having nice Farrow & Ball paint on the walls if you’ve got water ingress.”

The limestone walls that give the house such a lovely rustic look are more porous than one would wish – especially on such an exposed site – so Will has protected them from penetrating damp with a masonry cream.

“It was vital that this was highly breathable,” he says, “otherwise you’re just creating a whole new problem.”

The side of the house had been rendered at some time.

He adds, “We’ve just painted that side of the house with some hydrophobic silicone paint too, rather than the standard masonry paint that it had before. It’s breathable and water repellent.

“In the summer we have the opposite going on, the thick stone walls retain the heat. And we face south, so it can get very hot.

“When we were doing the garage works, we stole an idea from Grand Designs to try and tackle that.

“I remembered that Dan and Nina from the Watershed – the Chichester house with the natural swimming pool – said how much cooler their home was once the pool was there.

“So, when we had the garage and terrace made, I thought that, if we put a pool on the terrace, it might help cool the house in summer, and it’s worked.

“When the heat comes, the water in the pool evaporates, and it cools the whole front of the house.”

Improved energy efficiency

Having sorted these structural fundamentals, Will felt able to move forward with the first of his eco refit plans.

He says, “I grew up in a Victorian terraced house and I understand the issues around the energy efficiency of older houses.

“I’ve become quite a geek about finding ways to improve those aspects of the house.

“It’s never going to be a Passivhaus, but what interests me is whether you can get closer to what modern building regs would demand of a normal three-bedroom house on a modern estate in terms of efficiency.”

Solar panels

A key part of the sustainability improvements at Craigfoot was the addition of solar panels.

“Will runs his own business in the pharmaceutical sector, which requires a lot of IT capacity, and he runs the servers at home.

“So, he was keen to reduce the firm’s carbon footprint with the solar panels at the same time as making a dent in his high electricity costs.

“The panels, coupled with a battery in his new garage, now keep the servers running 24 hours a day.”

Simon Bones, founder and CEO of green-retrofit specialist Genous, which advised Will on his system, explains that 16 panels were installed across three different locations on the roof.

All the data

Will says, “I wanted to be able to prove our clean-energy credentials to my clients.

“And the set-up we have now enables us to do that. We can capture all the data about what we generate and use.

“From a corporate perspective, we can say to our clients, all our IT is powered from a Net Zero source. And now we have the data to prove it.”

In summer, the solar panels provide enough electricity for the household and Will’s business.

He adds, “In winter, it’s sustainable throughout the day, too, when the weather’s OK. And then we have the battery as well.

“This is a big house – 2,100 square feet, with 12-, 13-foot ceilings – and I think our total combined bill is about £170 a month.

Next steps

Will plans on embracing MVHR (mechanical ventilation with heat reclaim) and triple glazing next.

The old place will no doubt chuck some challenges in his way on the path to that installation, just to keep things interesting – but, where there’s a Will, there’s a way, as they say…

Five top tips from the expert

Simon has advised many people on how add eco upgrades to their older properties.

So, we asked him for his five top tips for anyone looking to retrofit energy-efficiency upgrades to their period property.

1. Respect the fabric of the building

Traditional buildings are constructed differently from modern ones, and that means you need to use different materials and approaches to those you might use in more modern buildings.

Sometimes the differences can be advantageous; many Victorian properties have suspended floors that are easier to insulate than solid floors, for instance.

But most older buildings are designed to ‘breathe’, and that includes moisture passing through walls.

This means you need to use the right type of insulation, and ventilation is important to avoid damp, mould and other health and building-fabric issues.

For some really difficult buildings, the right answer is probably to leave the insulation as it is: there may be other things you can do to improve efficiency without risking the building fabric.

2. Do wall insulation at the same time as other renovations

Most older buildings don’t have wall cavities, so they need solid-wall insulation, which is much more expensive than cavity-wall insulation.

External-wall insulation doesn’t cause internal disruption, but it’s very expensive and typically won’t be accepted in conservation areas or on listed properties.

Internal insulation tends to be cheaper (though still expensive), but is disruptive.

So, the best time to consider it is as part of a major renovation of a property – particularly if you’re taking the plaster off the walls anyway.

Using a builder as part of a bigger building job often makes it more cost-effective, too.

3. Modern heat pumps can suit older properties

If insulating your solid brick or stone walls isn’t possible or economical, that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of renewable technologies.

High-temperature heat pumps can keep even a relatively leaky building warm without huge radiators.

And, if you’re in a position to upgrade radiators or go to underfloor heating, you can improve the heat pump’s efficiency by running the water flow at a lower temperature.

This won’t stop the home getting as warm, it just makes the system work more efficiently because the heat pump needs to do less work.

4. Large Victorian houses often need more than one heat pump

Whereas fossil-fuel boilers can produce more heat just by increasing their flow (like a jet engine), heat pumps have a maximum output (more like a car engine).

So, if you need more heat than one heat pump can produce, you’ll need two of them installed in series, which is much more expensive.

In that case, it could be that an investment in insulation could reduce your heat loss to a level where you could stick to a single heat pump. This could cost you less overall and give you a cosier home that loses less heat: a win-win.

5. Use real experts to get it right

Solid-wall insulation, ventilation strategies, managing multiple-heat-pump installs and other aspects of retrofitting an older property are things that should be dealt with by experts.

There is no reason these steps won’t work or will damage the building if they are planned properly.

But you need to get someone to help you who understands traditional buildings, and can explain the best approach for the unique demands of your home.

A cookie-cutter approach seldom works well in these cases, and you should only work with someone who can really inspire your trust.

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