Pallington Farm is an 18thC, grade 2 listed farmhouse built in 1782. It is traditional Dorset construction with solid brick walls and a mixture of sold and timber floors downstairs with a Clay Tile roof and Purbeck Stone tiles over the eaves. With 16 rooms, a cavernous attic, a 19thC wing and a 20thC flat roof extension, with no insulation, it is a lovely building, but a challenge to renovate.
The farmhouse had been neglected for many years - roughly 50 in fact – and enjoyed the privilege of Electricity – but not much else by way of services. Water was drawn from a well under the Drawing Room, it has its own Sewage treatment system, and heating was provided by an oil-fired boiler and cooking and hot water via an oil-fired Aga. This had to be on all year to provide the hot water.
There are also some old outbuildings and some land.
We bought the property in 2021 with the aim of renovating and transforming this oil guzzling behemoth – 23Ct pa in Carbon terms to run and £6,000pa in cost – into an Eco home with a zero Carbon footprint.
We set ourselves the challenge of proving that it is possible to convert an old, listed, solid wall farmhouse into a warm, comfortable, low carbon home.
The plan was to install a heat pump, remove the ancient steel pipe plumbing system and add under floor heating throughout, to insulate, to add solar PV and a battery plus an EV charger – we already had the EV but now had nowhere to charge it. If we could install the Heat pump quickly then we could claim the RHI and the pump would pay for itself over 7 years.
We knew that we would not be able to add solar PV to the house, so we intended to demolish some fallen down pigsty’s and build a car port so that we could put solar on the roof of the car port.
The first hurdle that we encountered was the necessity to get Planning Permission and Listed Building permission to make the improvements. This took 18 months due to the necessity for Bat surveys and the time it took satisfy the Council that our plans were acceptable. This included the time it took after the rejected application to put solar PV on the car port in case a passing motorist saw it – the compromise reached was to use inset solar.
The 2nd was that the heat pump required 3 phase electric and the property did not have a 3 phase supply. This required the Distribution Network Operator to upgrade the transformer at a cost of £25,000 and a time delay of 9 months.