Good Energy customer Stephen Beech of Beech Properties beat the likes of Costa Coffee and John Lewis to win The Best Energy Efficient Refurbishment Award at the prestigious Environment and Energy Awards on Tuesday.

Stephen refurbished an energy guzzling Manchester terrace bringing it from a G to an A in the Energy Efficiency Rating. “As far as we’re aware it’s the first property to make such a big jump,” says Stephen. He installed renewable technologies including solar panels, an air source heat pump for under-floor heating and hot water, a heat recovery system and insulation 50% above the average. The entire retro-fit cost Stephen around £60,000 and the property is now 100% carbon neutral with no energy bills.

“What the project proves”, says Stephen, “is that a common sense approach can get results. I was up against the big boys spending millions and I beat their refurbishment on a terraced house with basic common sense. I have no special training. I just did my research.

“The award was the most hotly contested of the evening and had the most entries. There was really nothing in it between us all. I was overjoyed when I won. I think the clincher was that it highlighted the problem of energy inefficient houses – a really big problem – and illustrated that it can be solved by the average man on the street.”

Stephen owns and manages 80 properties in Manchester and plans to bring them all up to the same award-winning standard. He’s about half way through and hopes to have them all completed early next year. “Ideally I want to remove energy bills from all of my properties and the key to that is the Feed-in Tariff so I’m trying to push as many refurbs through as possible before the payments are reduced. My message to people is don’t wait until tomorrow. The Feed-in Tariff is a fantastic opportunity and people should be making the most of it. Beech Solar facilitates that side of things. It’s essentially a cooperative – I buy my own panels and I use my experience to buy for other people interested in installing solar technology. By buying in bulk we all get a better deal.”

You can read more about Stephen and Beech properties here.