Lucy Dixon spoke to David Broom, Commercial Director at Kensa Contracting, and Patrick Berry, Programme Director at Together Housing to find out how the two organisations have been working together to reduce the energy bills of around 1,500 tenants.
Together Housing owns and manages over 36,000 properties across the North of England, and since 2018 it has been working on a decarbonisation project, alongside Kensa Contracting, on what is the largest retrofit ground source heat pump (GSHP) project to date.
The worked kicked off with a small pilot project, which was then rolled out to 26 locations, with 1,200 Kensa Shoebox heat pumps installed and connected to shared ground loop arrays – where two or more homes share a borehole.
The decision to install GSHPs for the blocks of flats coincided with the change in the non-domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) back in 2017, which meant that Together Housing would be able to generate an income from the scheme, as Programme Director Patrick Berry explains: “This meant we could install green, renewable energy into our flats and get our money back over 20 years.”
The majority of the projects have involved replacing storage heaters, which had never been very popular with Together Housing’s tenants, as Berry explains: “We had a pretty long history of tenants complaining about storage heaters, because they were difficult to use, didn’t keep them warm when needed and were more expensive, so we were looking for an alternative, sustainable solution.” There is also a site where obsolete gas systems are being taken out. “There are different types of challenges on each site,” he says.
Pilot project
The pilot project, at a site called Towngate, involved 124 flats. This scheme was the start of a continuous programme of work across Lancashire and Yorkshire between the two organisations, with a flow of drilling and infrastructure followed by the heat pump installation and handover, and there are many advantages to this size of project, says David Broom, Commercial Director at Kensa Contracting. “What was nice about delivering a project of that scale over that timeframe is that we developed a really good working relationship, a partnership.”
This well-oiled system was, inevitably, interrupted by COVID in 2020, which caused what Broom describes as a “hiatus” but the teams were ready to put their foot down as soon as they could. Broom says: “COVID put a little bit of pressure on the deadlines and it definitely got quite frenetic towards the end, but, between us, we did a great job of accelerating the programme and getting them installed on time.”
The team had a good relationship with the tenants too, who were thrilled to wave goodbye to their storage heaters and, as Berry says, “have taken an interest in the new technology” that was installed with the tenants in situ.
The majority of the installation work for a GSHP is, of course, done outside, so moving people out wasn’t necessary. Broom says: “The really challenging bit is when you’re working inside someone’s home, but it’s about communication with them and being sensitive to the fact it is their home.”
Berry adds: “Moving tenants out sounds easy, but it’s not. It takes a long time and is very disruptive to the tenants, particularly as a lot of our blocks house elderly people. We felt we could manage this in a way which minimised the disruption to tenants – and that’s proved to be the case.” The minimal disruption is mentioned in the glowing testimonials many of the tenants have shared, with one saying they were “dreading the mess and uproar” and delighted it had never materialised.
Broom says: “The bulk of the install within the apartment is done in two days – and the hot water is generally only off for a few hours during that period, so we can get the hot water cylinder switched out and back on with an immersion within a couple of hours so they’re only ever without hot water for a short period of time.”
Comfort levels
In terms of the heating itself, temporary heating is supplied if required, but it’ll be back on by the third day. “After that, it’s commissioning, snagging and tidying up,” says Broom. “The vast majority of people were very tolerant, very accepting, because in the main everyone was very much bought into the fact that they would get a huge enhancement in terms of the comfort that they feel.”
That upgrade to comfort levels is no small thing, either, as Broom says: “Storage heaters are prohibitively expensive and we’re working with tenants who choose to live in one room because they couldn’t afford to heat more. We’re giving them a full central heating system that they can afford to operate.” That’s obviously a big win, before you even think about carbon savings or, in the case of the gas heating that was replaced on some of the buildings, safety and compliance issues.
Berry adds: “Because of what’s happened with the price of electricity, storage heaters really start to affect the affordability of our building stock particularly with high rises, so it starts to undermine the asset from a business perspective if we’re not able to offer a level of affordable comfort.”
User education
There was a certain amount of education needed when it came to operating the new systems, says Berry, as it’s not a like-for-like replacement – and those with storage heaters would have a different understanding to those with gas. “We put a lot of effort into talking to the tenants about what that system was, how it worked, and how they should think about approaching it to make it most efficient for them.”
This crucial process was shaped by the pilot project, which involved closely monitoring the smart meter data to see if any of the residents weren’t using the kit to the best of its ability. Berry adds: “That data gave us a fairly strong indication of what was going on, so we could see how the tenant was using the system. And if it looked like they’re not sure how to use it or using it incorrectly, we offer support to help them.”
Broom says: “Landlords like Patrick have a duty to their residents to provide them with affordable heat. And there are an increasing number of residents that are coming into fuel poverty at the moment, particularly where you have storage heaters in multiple occupancy blocks. Tackling this is the journey that we went on together, building a business case for the projects.”
Kensa is now running a series of webinars for similar organisations, to talk about the work it’s been doing with Together Housing. Broom adds: “The webinars are for housing providers and local authorities, to demonstrate this route as a solution for housing stock in high rise tower blocks specifically.”
The project has been such a success, it was labelled European Heat Pump City of the Year 2020. Berry explains: “The city factor is something of a misnomer, because it was actually about the project overall, for the large scale roll-out of shared loop system in a domestic setting.”
When it comes to lessons learned from the collaboration Broom says the main one is that it is possible to “roll-out low carbon heating at scale”, with good outcomes for all stakeholders. He adds: “That’s the big message that we’ve been trying to disseminate off the back of this scheme, that making that large scale transition is possible.”
Now the goal is replicating this and scaling it up further because, as Broom points out, 1,200 heat pumps over three years is a big change for ground source, but it’ll need to be ramped up considerably to add to the 600,000 a year the country is aiming for. “There are still a few more scales up, to be able to meet those sorts of numbers, but it’s been really useful having been through this programme, so we can apply that learning and how we got through the gears to scale up even further.”
