Bletchley Revisited

Back in 2017 Energy Conservationist Andrew decided to put his money where his mouth is, by sinking all his savings into building a radical, self-heating home for his family – the first of its kind in the UK. Remarkably he aimed to heat the house all year round by storing the warmth of the summer sun into insulated earth banks over and around the house, and then drawing the warmth back into the living spaces in winter. Heated by nature, there wasn’t to be a single radiator in sight. Whilst wife Margretta (a former midwife) yearned for a contemporary and beautiful house, Andrew’s focus was primarily on his gigantic thermal experiment, bristling with thermal probes.

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From the start this pioneering construction seemed an exercise in trial and error. Andrew's initial design was vetoed as ‘unsafe’ by his structural engineer before he’d even broken ground. In fact what began as a seemingly simple, pure concept became a complicated feat of earth moving and engineering, testing their aggressively small £300k budget and Margretta’s patience to the limit. It was to take at least 2 years for the self-heating to reach its full potential, and how the house would perform in record summer temperatures was a mystery.

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Six years since his last visit, Kevin McCloud returns to see if this ground breaking experiment has proven a success, or if Andrew’s professional reputation now lies in tatters.