“We Wanted Low Running Costs During our Retirement”

For retired builder Alec Wilson and his wife Stephanie, taking on a self-build for their retirement was all about creating a contemporary home that would be easy to maintain, smaller than their previous homes — and cheap to run. They chose a three-phase ground source heat pump, from Indigo Renewables, with 800m of pipework buried underneath the large garden.

“Ground source heat pumps work fantastically well — I’d installed them myself before but never lived with them,” comments Alec. The house, in Leicestershire, is entirely powered by electricity, apart from two gas bottles for the cooker hob; the energy bills are satisfyingly low.