If you are planning a deep energy retrofit of your home, an SEAI One Stop Shop will look after you from start to finish.
One Stop Shops are home energy upgrade experts that have registered with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). They offer a complete, end to end service for all aspects of your home energy upgrade, managing the entire process for you.
That goes from carrying out the initial assessment of your home, to establishing its current BER rating, and advising you on the best options to improve it.
It includes everything from insulation and heat pump installation, to organising new windows and doors and, if you wish, solar panels.
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They then look after your SEAI grant applications for you, and are paid those grants directly by the SEAI, once the finished job has been approved.
Right now, generous grants are available, including up to €1,500 for attic insulation, €8,000 for external wall insulation and €6,500 towards the installation of a heat pump system.
All significantly reduce the cost of works for homeowners, while at the same time ensuring they get an energy efficient, low carbon and cosy home at the end.
Putting the process into action
REIL, one of a number of One Stop Shops available on the SEAI website, was set up in 2011 and today employs 30 people. It’s an energy efficiency specialist which works across both the residential and commercial sectors, as well as with local authorities and approved housing bodies.
Led by managing director Paddy Sweeney and One Stop Shop scheme manager Orla Harte, its team has carried out energy upgrades right across the country.
It provides a seamless service that begins with potential clients submitting an application to reil.ie, where one of its retrofit advisors will guide them through the process.
Next comes a 45-minute online session to assess your home’s current energy efficiency, and to get a tailored upgrade plan drawn up with estimated costs and grants.
If you are happy to proceed, a project manager will then visit your home to confirm feasibility and finalise the project scope, this time providing a detailed quotation including grant deductions.
As a One Stop Shop, REIL will look after all the SEAI grant paperwork and create a custom heating design system for your home.
With your approval, you then receive a formal contract with a start date, project timeline and step by step work schedule.
REIL’s team completes the upgrade, ensures the work meets SEAI standards, and furnishes you with a final BER certificate plus a homeowner manual for easy maintenance of your new heating systems.
Incentivising energy reduction
A key aspect of the development of One Stop Shops was to incentivise people to go on the full retrofit journey rather than step by step, the historical norm, explains Paddy Sweeney, REIL’s managing director. It is based all the SEAI pilot schemes that preceded it, and benefits from all that learning, he adds.
“The big benefit to the homeowner is that they get the full project done for them, from start to finish, and receive additional grants that they wouldn’t receive if they were doing the measures one by one,” he explains.
On top of that, the fact that the grant is discounted off the overall cost by the contractor, rather than refunded to the homeowner afterwards, makes it as accessible as possible.
“It means you can get, say, €60,000 worth of work done and €30,000 worth of grant. The homeowner will pay €30,000 and the One Stop Shop has to fund the other €30,000, before receiving that back off the SEAI. Only once the works are certified complete, with BER, and the SEAI has approved the work, do we receive the balance of the money in the form of the grant,” explains Sweeney.
Homeowners also benefit from the fact that the One Stop Shop market is a competitive one. When REIL started in the scheme it was one of just four. Today there are more than 20 One Stop Shops operating.
“It’s a rigorous process to become a One Stop Shop, it’s all about your previous experience and the processes you have in place to manage,” he says.
The result is that the homeowner doesn’t have to ring around trying to find experts in various energy systems, from insulation to heat pumps. One Stop Shops do all of that for them.
“With the One Stop Shop you are assessing the property and the homeowner and trying to find the retrofit that’s best for them,” says Sweeny.
It’s important to note that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to home energy upgrades. It’s about finding the approach that is best for your home, and your budget.
“It’s about sitting down with the homeowner, having assessed the building and done a building energy rating, to see what works are actually possible for them to bring that house up to a B2,” says Sweeney.
“There could be three, four or five different solutions that you discuss with the homeowner to find the one that really one works best for them.”
