Brian McIntyre

It's difficult.

The cost it works to do, works to make the attic accessible in those areas and that could be taking down roof or ceiling panels or ceiling boards and doing that kind of thing.

But there's 100 millimetres of insulation there already in the inaccessible areas.

There's accessible areas that are well insulated and getting the house wrapped, I do think that they will probably, if they get their BR done after the walls are insulated, they might be pleasantly surprised.

There's a pretty good chance that their house will be eligible for a heat pump.

Yeah, if they have the grant for triple glazing, it means the heat loss is below the kind of threshold where it makes sense to put in or where we're eligible for a heat pump under our schemes anyway.

A 10-year-old boiler is in its twilight years, shall we say, so it's kind of the right time to be looking at replacing with a heat pump.

We have a grant for it up to €12,500 now to get a heat pump put in to replace that boiler.

So yeah, I mean, financially, environmentally, it makes sense there.

No, it doesn't affect the grant.

Yeah, you just pop it up, you inflate it, and then just turn the valve to let it back out.

Yeah, I mean, 80% of the energy used in your house is for heating.

So if you're replacing gas or oil with the heat pump, your electricity bill is going to go up.

I would expect that.

So that's the first place to look at, like compare your gas or oil bills beforehand with what the increase in your electricity has been.

If it is still high, you'd contact the installer.

There may be some issues that could be readily addressed with the commissioning and the setup of the heat pump.

So, yeah, I think look at those two points first.

Is it exceeding what you expected based on your previous bills?

And then if it is, call the installer back.