24/02/2026
Have you watched Guy Martin's 'House Without Bills' yet? It's a pretty good introduction to energy saving home upgrades. He's also put together some useful links in the post below. If you have any questions about your own home renovation or want to visit a heat pump, do come along to our Home & heart warming stories event - this Saturday 28th Feb from 10am at Southlands Methodist Church! Join us for the whole day or just one session.
It's free, including lunch and part of York International Women's Week - YIWW but any adult is welcome.
Hear from 2 retrofit professionals - Camilla from Wrapt Homes and our very own assessor Ivana - as well as an environmentally concerned mum Elizabeth. They have all made homes more comfortable, healthier and cheaper to run. Please share if you can; many thanks!
York Community Energy Planet South Bank York Environment Forum St Nicks YorkMix
Lots of folk have been asking for more info after watching the House Without Bills programme link in comments to watch on demand, so the team behind the show put together some useful links and got a word from Guy about it all.
1) Help with actually paying energy bills:
“First port of call should be Citizens Advice, they’re helping people every day of the week.” https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/problems-with-your-energy-bill/energy-bill-too-high/
“Apparently this lot are useful too: National Energy Action.” https://www.nea.org.uk/get-help/
2) Stuff you can do to your house:
“Sort your insulation, sort your draught-proofing, make sure you keep an eye on ventilation, then you can think about upgrading windows and doors. Passive House standards are the ultimate, but you don’t have to go that far, just use them as guidance. We had amazing success with cheap methods like old fashioned draught excluders and heavy, thermal curtains, and the German thing of Stoßlüften – basically opening your windows for a bit is a regular thing round our house now.”
Energy Savings Trust is a trusted source of upgrade info who have payback/savings info too: https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/top-energy-saving-ideas-for-your-home-improvement-project/
Citizens Advice have some thoughts as well, a bit more slanted towards how you live rather than what you fit: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/save-energy-at-home/make-sure-your-home-is-energy-efficient/
3) Passive House
“Gold standard, no question. I had a massive chat to the inventor, Dr Feist over in Germany. He’s like the Einstein of energy efficient homes and I love that the bloke behind the system is a physicist, not a builder. I could bore you to tears about what we chatted about – Arctic ships, nuclear fusion, Chinese caves, apparently it was all too long to fit in the programme. Anyway, Passive House retrofit can be bloody expensive but you can always look at doing one room at a time, or one thing at a time, like insulation one year and windows the next. But to be honest, any sort of retrofit can be expensive, Passive House or not.” https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/ - “they helped us loads” and are a good source of info.
https://www.progressinpractice.co.uk/ - Hannah the architect of the Stretford project, “dead, dead knowledgeable, learnt a load talking to her behind the scenes”.
https://passivhaus.uk/directory/myzsa-group/ - Josh was the builder at Stretford, “…sound lad. Learnt his trade from his dad, who in the 80s went to find work in Germany, like in Auf
Wiedersehen, Pet. He saw that German standards were a million years ahead of British standards and brought some of that mentality back with him”.
https://retrofitwindows.co.uk/ - “I worked with these boys to fit some triple glazing at Stretford. Black Country precision engineers, brilliant.”
https://pycgroup.co.uk/ - “Blink and you miss ‘em in the programme but really impressive recycled newspaper insulation outfit. Think they do timber-framed buildings as well.”
4) Hardware
“A house can’t make its own gas, but it can make its own electric with solar and batteries, and a few of us who work on the telly stuff have gone down that route and are well into it. There’s more schemes coming to make them affordable so that’s good news.”
Heat pumps – the programme showed how it’s critical you get them designed and fitted correctly. “I helped out Phil and his son Keaton from https://pclnetzero.com/ to install a Vaillant pump at Stretford. Brilliant tradesmen and very confidence inspiring, Phil said more pumps are fitted badly than fitted well so be careful.”
Everybody’s house is different so it’s hard to say with confidence if a heat pump will save you money – do your research at places like the get a heat pump website, or go and talk to an owner who is actually using one at Visit a Heat Pump.
That’s it, a bit of public service broadcasting for us all, hope it helps. Ta for watching.
