A Complete Electric Eco Retrofit of a 1920s Home

Our experience with Herschel has been fantastic from start to finish. Our first meeting with Jane was relaxed, informative and simple. She was enthusiastic about our project, clearly laid out our best options and made herself personally available to answer all our questions and support us throughout the lengthy project. We bought our home knowing it needed taking back to brick and refitting throughout. It hadn’t been touched since the 70s, many rooms had no heating of any kind, there was no insulation and the property itself had no existing gas connection, only an electrical supply. We planned a full eco retrofit with our architects and decided we did not want to install a gas connection or a heat pump (having heard mixed reviews about their genuine efficiency). Our research led us to Herschels and after a great chat with Jane we felt they had the best eco-friendly and most efficient solution to our temporary and permanent heating needs. Jane worked out how many heating panels we would need to heat the few rooms in our house which we had effectively set up camp in prior to building work commencing/planning permission being obtained. Jane then used our architect’s plans to calculate the number of panels of each wattage that we would need to heat the entire property when it was finished. As a result, we were able to buy panels to heat our home as it stood pre-renovation and reuse those panels efficiently in the finished property minimising how many panels we needed to purchase overall. The panels were simple for our electrician to install and very simple to control. Being able to control each room individually via each designated thermostat was a real benefit to us and a great cost saver. Now we’ve got proper Wi-Fi installed it is also fantastic being able to control the heating in every room via our phones. This will be our first winter in the finished house (with all its lovely new insulation!) but our first winter with the panels was a harsh one in the uninsulated house and the panels did a fantastic job of banishing the cold, we were really impressed with them. Whilst the cost and energy saving opportunities are the most important factors for us, you can’t ignore the practical and aesthetic benefits of these heating panels. We chose to mount ours on the ceilings and as a result we have been able to utilise all the space in the rooms without having to worry about blocking a radiator. The panels blend seamlessly into our ceilings so that most people don’t notice them until we point them out! Occasionally we run a long-poled duster around the edges but only because I feel we should, not because you can actually see any dust, whereas in our previous home you could see the dust accumulating regularly on the top of our old radiators. These panels are unobtrusive, silent, consistent, energy-efficient and easy to control: What more could you ask for? Our experience of these panels, and of our end to end customer journey with Herschels, has been fantastic throughout our build process. We cannot recommend these products highly enough and feel we have made a positive environmental difference and future-proofed our home by choosing this eco-friendly electrical option.