Public Funding for Loco Home Retrofit Community Interest Company

The project will create an innovative service that accelerates the adoption of heat pumps as replacements for gas boilers. The proposed business model leverages a street-by-street approach based on deep pre-defined energy models for target building typologies. Our unique structure as a trusted local co-operative and social enterprise will enable local market growth. This proposed service will address key barriers to heat pump installation: the cost of household acquisition and preparedness; trust and reducing the variability of heat pump performance; getting houses ready in terms of insulation and radiator upgrades. The proposed service will not install heat pumps but will provide design services and refer to installers those households and homes that the service has made 'heat pump ready'. A unique part of the proposition is that we will use 'getting gas right' as a hook for both heat pump sceptics and gas engineers struggling to transition to heat pumps. That is because, according to a DECC study, most condensing gas boilers do not condense. Therefore boiler efficiency gains can be achieved through the same mechanisms that get a home ready for a heat pump: lower flow temperatures, radiator upgrades and better control strategies. The proposed service will start with a heat loss survey augmented by prior analysis of specific building typologies and by in-home sensing. The service will coordinate 'bulk buys' for radiator upgrades and insulation installations. When the household and home are ready for the heat pump installation, the service will refer the customer to a trusted installer. Customers can retain us to monitor the performance of the system to trigger installer call-backs or advice on control strategy. The project will develop the energy analysis of several targeted building typologies and neighbourhoods in Glasgow. These will be selected for being 'hard to treat' (older, Victorian buildings) and on demographics (more affluent, educated, tending towards climate action). The project will further leverage the organisation's existing expertise in retrofit and heating design and develop this into a tested, repeatable survey methodology.