
Think locally, act globally is an environmental slogan which came home to Belper when heating engineer Alistair Cooper was asked to do a job.
You can’t get much more local than Mr. Cooper’s first installation of Glow-worm solar panels - just down the road from the place where he took one of Glow-worm’s first solar courses, the company’s head office in Belper. The heating engineer’s customers were certainly thinking globally since their motivation for installing the kit was to do their bit for the environment.
Alistair Cooper of A J Cooper Plumbing & Heating Services, Horsley Woodhouse, Derbyshire, employs anything from 6 to 12 heating engineers up to six days a week fitting Glow-worm domestic boilers into one-off installations.
The solar job came about through a builder friend, who happened to be re-roofing the property when the householder asked if solar panels could be installed at the same time. Since the scaffolding was up, it seemed to make sense to do the two things in one go.
“With gas prices increasing as they are, they thought they would be foolish not to have solar panels installed at the same time as the re-roofing,” said Alistair Cooper.
The builder recommended A J Cooper, who was eager to use his Glow-worm Clearly Solar BPEC training course knowledge, as well as getting involved in this exciting new sector.
The heating engineer installed two panels on the roof and a twin coil unvented cylinder in the loft; all available in an easy to order 2 panel pack kit from Glow-worm.
Capable of providing 50-60% of the homes annual domestic hot water and with all the necessary components available from one manufacture, Clearly Solar was the straightforward choice for the installation.
“A neighbour from round the corner drove past, saw the panels being installed and stopped and asked us to quote,” said Alistair Cooper. “That's one that I've got in the pipeline.”
“I think this type of work will snowball. We have got another two possibles in the pipeline. I can really see it taking off. There are more and more heating engineers vans around flagging up solar engineering, whereas, five or six years ago there were very few.”
Although there are plenty of conventional gas boiler work around, Alistair welcomes solar installations as an extra string to his bow. “Anything extra is a bonus,” he said. “We get involved in a lot of new build developments and there has been a dramatic increase in the number of solar thermal systems being installed- which is good news for us now we are fully trained to fit them”.
The panels were installed in an in-roof arrangement on the side of a dormer section of a T shaped roof. Alistair had been advised when he went on the Glow-worm Solar BPEC training course that planning permission is not required for solar installations providing the panels do not protrude more than 200mm from the line of the roof.
All the same, he was told, it’s good practice to keep the planning department informed, so out of courtesy, the customer wrote a letter informing their local planning office of the proposed installation.
“Providing it isn't a listed building or an ancient monument then most of the time there's no argument,” said Alistair.
“When you go out to survey the job you tick off the questions and are prompted to mention lots of important things to the customer.
The Glow-worm Clearly Solar BPEC training course was excellent in this respect. It’s a new avenue for us so there is a big element of sales and customer handling. Another great thing about attending the Clearly Solar BPEC course was upon completion, we were given a Glow-worm Accredited installer pack, containing site assessment forms, commissioning checklists, brochures, ‘Accredited Installer’ stationary software and also a £300 cash back voucher for money back off the first kit we ordered. Attending the BPEC course was really good value for money for me.”
The installation was reasonably straight forward and was all wrapped up in three days. “After the installation, the customer was so pleased with their new solar system that we received a letter of thanks”.
“The installation was a learning experience which we really enjoyed,” says Alistair who installs a lot of Glow-worm boilers - nine in just one month recently.
“The main reason we choose Glow-worm is reliability and Simon Brown, Glow-worm’s East Midlands regional sales manager. He's excellent. If we get any problems or anything we are unsure about even at eight o'clock at night I can phone Simon and it’s dealt with”.
“When you get that sort of back up you are reluctant to switch.”
Simon Brown said this job was the first Glow-worm solar installation in Belper, the location of the company’s head office.
“I was pleased by how well the installation went,” he said. “It’s good to get local installations close to the factory and the neighbours seemed very interested so there will probably be more.”