Alex explains CUTHEATLOSS.COM on a BBC radio

Alex explains what is thermal imaging and how it can help individual home owners identify heat loss from their homes, reduce their bills, improve their comfort and have less impact on the planet.

Full transcript of Alex interview

BBC Radio: How energy efficient is your home? Have you ever checked? Most homeowners don't realize their homes are leaking heat and that means leaking money. So there's technology out there that can take thermal images of your home and then it can work out where you're losing the heat from. And a firm doing it are based in Telford.

They're called Skilled Mapping. Alex Wrigglesworth is the boss from the firm and he's here with me now. Hello.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Hello.

Thank you so much for having me on.

BBC Radio: So how did this all start for you then? How did you get involved in all this?

Alex Wrigglesworth: So I used to do geospatial, which is basically taking photos of the street.

And another member of our team is in machine learning. And so we thought, what's a big problem that we can solve? And heat loss in the homes homeowners spending a lot of money on heating their home. And also the CO2 that's released from inefficient homes is a very important problem to solve. So that's the problem we're starting to solve with thermal imaging.

BBC Radio: How did you get into doing this then?

Alex Wrigglesworth: I got into doing it by working with big tech companies. And that's your background. That's our [00:01:00] background. Yep. And then we've got thermal imaging people in the team. And we learned that doing thermal imaging is very beneficial for homeowners. And so we, we started on a mission to reduce that cost.

BBC Radio: Wow. Okay. And so how do you do thermal imaging?

Alex Wrigglesworth: So, we have a mobile mapping system, which is essentially a car that drives down drives down the road. And the car collects images as we go. And then that image goes to a thermographer. And then the thermographer creates a report like a traditional thermographer would go to your house with a camera.

They take photos of your home, and instead of the photo showing a picture image, it would show the heat loss, and instead of doing that with a thermographer actually visiting, we prior collect the data with a car. So, for example, we already have a thermal image of the whole of Wolverhampton, and then we can This is from driving down streets.

Yes, so we've already collected every home in the whole of Wolverhampton and we aim to collect the whole of Shrewsbury and Telford by the end of [00:02:00] March.

BBC Radio: And this is via a car?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Via a car, yeah.

BBC Radio: So I always, if I, if most people were to picture thermal image of a house, you would picture the roof, wouldn't you?

That's I think in the past what we used to. So you do, how are you doing the roof from the street?

Alex Wrigglesworth: So we can see a really large field of view. So we can actually see the front of the house. We can see the roof. And sometimes if it's accessible by the road, we can see the sides of the house as well. And yeah, we're seeing some, some things that, retrofits that people can do at home to, to, to save themselves money.

BBC Radio: What sort of images are you getting back? Are they, are they quite bad, or am I, as in, a lot of people are losing a lot of heat?

Alex Wrigglesworth: So we think we're discovering things that aren't known by even government, really. Because we're looking at heat loss on a city wide scale. If you're at home and you're looking at a radiator that's on an outside wall, If we were to drive past that, that home, we would see a temperature difference on the outside of the house by about four or five degrees.

And what that means is you have a radiator on an outside wall, [00:03:00] that is heating your wall inside your house, that, that energy then transfers through the wall to the outside air. So you're spending money heating the outside air.

BBC Radio: Okay, we're all sitting here now looking at how many radiators we've got on an outside wall.

I've got one in the lounge, one in the dining room. One in each of the bedrooms. Oh God, so I'm losing loads of heat then.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, and loads of money.

BBC Radio: Thanks, lovely to meet you.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, so, there's an easy solution. You can get a radiator reflector, and they generally pay back between one or two years. Your home heats up faster you save money, and you yeah, and there's no real downside.

BBC Radio: Radiator reflector, talk me through, what's that?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Radiator reflector, it's just an aluminium foil, basically. Basically? that sits behind the, in between the radiator and your outside wall, and instead of the heat going into the brickwork, it comes back into your living room. So your heat, your your room heats up quicker.

BBC Radio: Wow. That sounds like a very simple but effective.

Alex Wrigglesworth: [00:04:00] Yep. So this is what we're trying to show people. When you show the heat waste, people change their perception of, you don't have to do, if you can't afford cavity wall insulation, if you can't afford expensive retrofits, you can do things like radiator reflectors.

And every person that we've shown the heat on the outside of their home, they've gone out and bought a radiator reflector.

BBC Radio: I'm going to buy one today. Where do you get radiator? DIY shops?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, any DIY shops.

BBC Radio: Are they expensive?

Alex Wrigglesworth: No you can get a pack for your whole home for probably 40 and depending on the size of your home that could, that could save you 40 to 60 a year and 350 kilograms of CO2.

BBC Radio: And my house will feel warmer.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Exactly, yeah.

BBC Radio: Okay, so who is funding all of this?

Alex Wrigglesworth: So we're a privately funded company at the moment. We're looking at working with councils and housing associations to help those who are most vulnerable. I mean, in there, there's unfortunately in the West Midlands, 17. 8 percent of our population live in fuel poverty, according to the UK Housing Review.

And heating, we, if there's small retrofits that housing associations and [00:05:00] councils can do to elevate the temperature of a vulnerable person's home, it could stop you know, over 3, 000 excess deaths a year, not from COVID But because people can't heat their homes.

BBC Radio: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course the older, elderly are very vulnerable.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, and identifying these, these homeowners is also an issue for, for councils and the NHS. They do generally want to, from people we're talking to, they want to help. But it's identifying those that are in need and we think in the future that could be part of the solution.

BBC Radio: How long have you been doing this, Alex?

Alex Wrigglesworth: We've been doing it in research and development for 14 months and at the moment we're working with experts like thermographers architects and people to, to understand that what we're finding in the data. And then we hope to use machine learning and, and, and computer programs to, to be able to do it at a much cheaper cost. So then we could increase access

BBC Radio: So you are going to use AI,, is that right?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, we're gonna use ai machine learning, and at the moment our images go to a thermographer and that thermographer has to manually review each image. [00:06:00] So if you are a city, a council or a unitary authority and you're trying to work out heat loss across every home, we, we can't really train enough thermographers to do that. So we train a computer to do what the, the thermographer is doing.

BBC Radio: Wow. So this is evolving technology quite quickly then, isn't it?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, we think we can be the world leader in, in, in thermography, and we think that we can, if we can get the right partnerships, we think that we can let the world know that there's lots of actions that can be taken now to to, to, to help with climate change and save homeowners money.

BBC Radio: And are you approaching all the councils with what you're doing?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, I mean, that's why we're here today. We only launched last week. So we've been in, like, closed R& D. You can only do thermography in the winter. You can only, you can't do it when it's raining. You can't do it when it's sunny. There's a lot of conditions.

So we've been really concentrating hard on collecting the data, building the system, and now we're ready to tell the world about it, really.

BBC Radio: Okay, good. And what's happening to all the data? What are you doing with all that?

Alex Wrigglesworth: So we are starting to, starting to analyze it, and, and once it's, once [00:07:00] we start to analyze it, we we're We're selling it to homeowners, and that's part of our, we don't want to be a company that holds data behind a closed wall.

We want to give people access. Lots of people are saying, why are you going business to consumer? We're, we don't want to be a company that doesn't allow people to have access to, to, to these, to these images. So we've got you can at the moment get a thermal image from us, but we hope to in the future do it at a wider scale.

BBC Radio: Right, but we, but not Shrewsbury yet because you haven't done Shrewsbury.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Well we've been building the system, I'm local, I'm from Bridge North, and the system's constantly evolving. So the master plan was that we'd come back to Shrewsbury when the, the system is at its best. It's not been the best weather this recently.

BBC Radio: So yeah, a lot of rain.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, a lot of rain. So we're, in the next two weeks, if we get a window of good weather, we will do Shrewsbury and, and Telford. It's it's important to the team.

BBC Radio: Do you get out and do that?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, I mean, so in the R& D phase, we have to drive at night. So it's age old, don't don't ask someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself.

So yeah, it's [00:08:00] not just me.

BBC Radio: And that is a one person job or is there more?

Alex Wrigglesworth: No, we have, we have three drivers. We have three drivers. But yeah, I'm out every night with them, which is part of startup life as well, you know, resource.

BBC Radio: So that's a lot of hard work and time consuming.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah. So at the moment, drive at night and work in the day.

So yeah, if I look a bit tired, that's it. That's why.

BBC Radio: And have you done your own house?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, yeah, I've done my own house and I found out lots of things. And ignorantly, as a person that cares about the environment, I've done cover to wall insulation. I've thought I'd, I'd spent enough on the home, and yet I'd left lots of cheap actions that I could do on the table.

And like garage door insulation. I hadn't insulated my garage door. We did a before and after. that you can see on our website. And the before and after is you, the, the garage door is red from the outside. You put the insulation and, and, and there's, you can see there's no heat loss.

BBC Radio: But you've got gaps down the side of your garage door, right?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, you do. And there's insulating tape for that. I guess it depends on how you use your [00:09:00] garage in my house. I'm not using it for the car. So I'm not opening and closing it every day. So in my case, I could do that. But that's the thing about what we're seeing is when you show someone a thermal image, we can't from the street, tell you everything about your home.

No. But we can, if you're the homeowner, you can think, actually I know what that red mark is. That's because I, I, I feel a gap. I feel some wind when I pass that. And then, but it makes you create, do the action to, to, to make a change.

BBC Radio: See, I have a problem with my bathroom because it's always drafty. I've got a massive radiator in there, but I've also got one of those oh, fans. An extractor fan. And I wonder how much that makes my bathroom cold.

Alex Wrigglesworth: So, that's where you'd go on to Retrofit Assessor, and that's where we think we can help the whole industry. Because if you looked at your your home, and then you saw the that there's lots of heat in the brickwork around the outside.

So what we see a lot is, you have a fan. fan that's drawing heat from your bathroom outside and the brickwork all around that, [00:10:00] that, that fan is, is warm. So that would seem to us as the imaging company, that there's an issue there. But then you would then call a retrofit advisor or send them an image and say, is there a product that fits?

BBC Radio: That's, that's why my bathroom's always blowing and cold. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Alex Wrigglesworth: And that's why it's we, we think we can be part of a team effort. We're not going out there saying we are the solution to every problem.

BBC Radio: No, but you're coming up with little ideas that can make a massive difference. Like the radio, what they call the radiation radio to reflectors.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah. And that's, that's what we hope to do.

BBC Radio: Fabulous. So if people want to find out more, you've got a website?

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, cutheatloss. com.

BBC Radio: Cutheatloss. com.

Alex Wrigglesworth: And we'd love to engage with the whole community, good or bad, let us know.

BBC Radio: Fabulous. Lovely to meet you.

Alex Wrigglesworth: Yeah, lovely to meet you. Thank you so much.

BBC Radio: Alex Wrigglesworth on BBC Radio Shropshire.