John Rous & Zeenat Rous of Clovelly Estate and Mukti Mitchell of Mitchell & Dickinson at the Energy Efficiency Awards

Insulating a village

Insulating our houses is a key part of reducing carbon footprints.  But do landlords want to  make the effort to insulate the homes of their tenants?   In North Devon, Clovelly Estate has gone the extra mile in insulating extremely quirky old cottages, to the delight of residents who report energy bills being cut by as much as half, while their homes feel cosier than before.

Efforts rewarded

This year, Clovelly won the National Landlord of the Year award for Energy Efficiency, run by the Energy Efficiency Association.  Clovelly won the award after completing a five-year programme of energy saving measures installed by period property insulation company, Mitchell & Dickinson, of Bideford, Devon.

Mrs Zeenat Rous said, “We are thrilled that Clovelly has won this prestigious national award.  Clovelly Estate thanks staff, residents and the team at Mitchell & Dickinson, who worked steadily for five years to overcome the challenges of quirky historic cottages and achieve what may be Britain’s most energy efficient heritage village.”

A pioneering programme

Clovelly’s insulation programme has attracted interest from organisations across the UK including the National Trust and Country Land & Business Association.  The installers, Mitchell & Dickinson, have insulated over 1,000 properties in Southern England including County Hall in Exeter and the CLA Headquarters in London.

Founder Mukti Mitchell said, “I started Mitchell & Dickinson to help owners of old properties and prove that they can be made energy efficient without spoiling their historic features.  Old buildings loose five times more heat than modern buildings and a quarter of British homes are over 100 years old[1]so this needs to be addressed to avert climate change.  Clovelly proves that even the most hard-to-treat properties can be insulated and it’s an honour to be recognised by the Energy Efficiency Awards.”  Mukti Mitchell was awarded third place as National Energy Efficiency Champion of the Year for all his work, at Mitchell & Dickinson and Carbon Savvy, around energy efficiency.

The work to make Clovelly’s 120 listed cottages energy efficient included fitting loft insulation, sloping ceiling insulation, concealed draught-proofing and award-winning secondary glazing.  Together these measures are estimated to save around 40% of heat loss.  The CosyGlazing, secondary glazing system is made of aeronautical Plexiglas and has been described as “virtually invisible”. It was developed by Mitchell & Dickinson and won the Chartered Institute of Building Sustainability Award.

[1]https://files.bregroup.com/bretrust/The-Housing-Stock-of-the-United-Kingdom_Report_BRE-Trust.pdf