Let me introduce myself for a bit: my name is Bart Hommels, and I live in Coton, a village just west of Cambridge. I am married to Rose, and we have a daughter named Ronja.
I work as an applied physicist at the Cavendish Laboratory, working on instrumentation for particle physics experiments.
I guess the Mr. Maker part of me is never switched off, as I like to make, mend and create things, both at work and in my free time.
Other things I like are outdoors activities: running, cycling and (almost) anything mountains - unfortunately not much of those around in Cambridgeshire.
When we bought our house, we knew it would require a lot of work to bring it up-to-date. After getting an electricity consumption meter, I got very interested in ways to reduce the energy demand of the house.
Soon after realising the potential of renewable energy, we decided to do what many others did at the time and we got solar panels installed: optimising the supply instead of reducing demand.
The thermal performance of house was addressed later: a year or two ago we decided to extend the house, as it was (is) generally quite small. I wanted this to be a starting point of a house-wide thermal upgrade instead of an add-on that would increase energy usage.
As I easily take many things too seriously, we embarked on a long eco-upgrade project. This is by no means completed, and hopefully I get to writing a few blog posts on what it all entails, and my random related ramblings on the subject.
