Welcome to Cosy Newton St Cyres!

Newton St Cyres is a village outside Exeter. We have several hundred houses in the village, of all shapes, sizes, ages, tenures and energy ratings.

There are more than a few listed houses, often with very old cob walls (adobe or mud, several feet thick).

I had a get together on the 22nd August with a few other owners to discuss how we could collect and disseminate knowledge about practical steps to make our homes more energy efficient.

There were some surprising outcomes, as well as some predictable ones.

Spot the secondary glazing!

Listed homes are restricted in what they can do to save energy, for example double glazing is frequently prohibited. But secondary glazing, if it can be removed, is not.

I looked into secondary glazing for Bailey Farm, which has about 20 windows in all.

To get professionally installed secondary glazing would cost aboput £400 per window, and that's with no remedial work on the existing windows, i.e. about £8000.

I looked into doing it myself, and discovered a system called Magnetglaze Pro, which for a material cost of about £1000 and about a week's work I used to do the whole house. 

That was last autumn, and the house was very noticeably warmer and easier to heat over last winter.

Is it as good as the expensive professional system? Probably not quite, but it certainly works, and is probably better value for money. It is also virtually invisible unless you are looking for it, and easy to take out and refit to clean the original windows.

All the windows still open without removing it (except the one in the picture, which was the first one I did!) so we are very pleased.