Lisa and Richard electrified everything!
Lisa and Richard live in their two story brick family home where they raised their adult children in Richmond. They are strongly motivated by climate change, so electrifying all elements of their house was a priority.
They shared their approach and experience with Electrify Yarra.
Why electrify?
Richard was blunt about why they made the change.
“Well, I mean… the climate! It’s got to be the right thing to do, we can’t keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and we have to take the opportunities where we can”. Lisa added “and then our gas hydronic boiler broke so then we had to decide whether to buy a new gas one or get an electric one. We had no heating at the start of winter”.
It was time to electrify.
What was your electrification journey?
When the heater failed, it was time for action. A single supplier with a ‘whole of house’ capability was chosen and a project was started in 2024 to:
Replace the gas hydronic boiler with a heat pump unit,
Replace gas hot water also with a heat pump system, and
Replace the gas cooktop with an induction cooker.
Richard: “When the heating failed we just thought, this is the time when you should make the change.’
Lisa: “Getting the heat pump for the hydronic was very expensive.
Following advice, the hydronic heating was also supplemented by three split system units spread throughout the house.
Lisa continued…”this is our first serious winter, it’s a bit hard to tell how well the heating’s going because Richard is monitoring our energy so closely that he’s often turning the heating down! But it works fine - what we do is set the hydronic at around 18 degrees and then we’ve got the reverse cycle [split system] units to boost the temperature when we need to.
We were a bit worried that the split systems would be blowing a lot of air, but we find they are ok, because they are just boosting the hydronic and they’re well located.”
Richard: “Our supplier installed the hydronic system, three split system units - two upstairs and one downstairs, plus the hot water and induction cooktop. We left solar as a separate project because we wanted to understand the energy usage and when we renovated back around 2014, we chose asphalt roofing tiles, and the supplier was unsure about mounting solar panels on them.”
That first supplier went broke last year just after completing the project. Fortunately, for us they seem to have done a good job and everything is working well.
Then it was time to get the solar system, we found a supplier that checked the roof and was fine working with the asphalt tiles, and we chose a 13kWh solar system together with a Tesla Powerwall 3, also 13kWh.
It was really disappointing that, since we have a heritage overlay in this neighborhood, the City of Yarra does not allow solar panels on the roof facing the street - we could have had a much bigger system, and use that part of the roof is north-facing.
We’re still waiting for Citypower to approve the connection of the battery to the grid but it’s working well, storing and supplying energy for the house.”
What lessons have you learned along the way?
Lisa: “The induction cooktop is really good, although we chose a high-end one, and, really, a simpler one would have been good - if you lift a pot, it automatically starts turning off that zone and we could live without that. We haven’t really noticed the difference from gas, it zooms up really fast.”
Richard: “I hadn’t really thought about having a naked flame in your house - it’s a pretty traditional thing to do. But you have a fire going there and house fires happen so easily. Plus the health impacts are bad. I just love the fact that the induction cooktop is flat, and it’s so easy to clean.”
Lisa: “The other thing we found with heating is that with kids having recently moved out for some time, we don’t really need to heat the whole house, but in an old [1930’s] house it’s hard to close off areas, and there are lots of draughts in the old part of the house.
Also on the battery, it’s located at the front of the house, and the Tesla logo lights up at night! We’re not fans of Elon Musk!”
What’s on your wish list?
Richard: “We would probably get an electric car at some time, we’ve got neighbours with electric cars. When you look at the energy you generate in the summer, you just can’t use it all.
I think I’ll also get someone to do a leak test on the house to see how we can improve the draughtproofing.
