Congratulations to our latest CarbonLite retrofit course graduates who have now received their certificates and are invited to add their details to our ‘CLR Graduates page’.

Andy Polkey from Wales is one of our latest graduates and he explains how he was able to benefit from completing the course with full funding from the Welsh government.

Andy had been a Nature Reserve Warden for 20 years and took voluntary redundancy in October 2016.  He now works part time as a gardener and environmental consultant but as this is seasonal, he wanted other work to run alongside this. Being passionate about sustainability, he decided that the retrofit course would be ideal for him to be able to offer advice on retrofit.  He was also interested in retrofitting his own house in the future.

Andy applied for funding with the Welsh Government, REACT scheme who give financial help to people who have become redundant (or in Andy’s case had taken voluntary redundancy) with a view to help them gain new skills to assist with finding alternative employment. In order to get the funding agreed, he needed a business mentor and had to put forward a business plan.  The scheme was flexible and welcomed new initiatives and his funding was agreed.

Andy found the course very useful and its flexibility allowed him to study on rainy days and evenings, fitting in nicely with his other work.  The most challenging parts of the course  for him were the sections on managing moisture levels in old buildings whilst improving airtightness and thermal efficiency.  The webinars he found useful and was able to listen to recordings if he couldn’t attend.  Andy’s advice to others doing the course is to keep up with the homework tasks to avoid having to re-visit previous sections of the course – although he did find this useful revision.

Regarding his own home project, Andy said: “Without the course I would have probably researched online and retrofitted our home on a piece meal basis.  The course has made me understand that it is essential to do a ‘whole house plan’ at the outset.  The moisture management side was very informative.  I would recommend this course to others.”