FAQs

In order to heat your home SDEN currently uses waste heat, which is provided by the existing landfill gas engines located in Beddington. In time, your home will be supplied with heat from the Beddington Energy Recovery Facility (ERF). Heat is transported, in the form of hot water, through highly insulated pipes to your home.

The network offers better resilience compared to conventional heat supplies. When the low-carbon sources of heat are occasionally offline for maintenance, supplies of hot water will be maintained from our backup and top-up boilers.

No. Your home does not have its own boiler. The heating for your home is supplied by our area wide heat network. Additionally, as there is no gas supply or gas boiler in your home, it is inherently safer. Annual safety checks associated with a gas boiler due to the risk of carbon monoxide are not required.

No. SDEN supplies all the properties on your development and there is no option to fit a conventional hot water or heating system. This is part of our commitment to clean energy.

Hot water for your shower, baths and sinks comes from your Heat Interface Unit (HIU) in the same way that it would from a normal boiler or hot water cylinder in your home. Cold water from your water supplier is heated inside the HIU by the hot water in our network. This hot water is then piped to your taps. The hot water from our network then return to our boilers.

Your home is equipped with an individual heat meter, the same as any other utility such as electricity or water, our tariffs can be found here. The meter is located inside your property and is automatically read via our data network. This means that you will not have a visit from one of our team other than for periodic checks of your meter to make sure that it continues working correctly. You will be given prior notice of any checks that we will need to carry out requiring access to your property.

You will be billed monthly for the heat supply you consume, plus a Standing Charge. Please see your Residential Supply Agreement for further details about payments and billing or log onto the online Portal.
Although you will receive a regular monthly bill, we do record the initial meter reading and final meter reading for your account when you move in and move out of the property. Please tell us if you would like to receive these readings when you register with us.

Yes. We all know how frustrating it is to have to wait for ages for the hot water from the tap to get hot. To overcome this, your Heating Interface Unit was designed by the manufacturer to always be warm and ready to deliver hot water instantly at any time. It does this by taking a tiny trickle of heat when it is not in use. This means that even when you are not using the heating or hot water there will still be a very small heat usage. We estimate this costs you about 4p/day on average. This is the same as most gas combi boilers when not in ‘eco’ mode; it uses a tiny trickle of gas to keep the boiler hot and ready.

The room temperatures are controlled by wall mounted controllers and the operating instructions for these are contained in your resident’s handbook.

In the unlikely event that problems occur in our network, requiring repairs, we will follow the standards as set out below.

Planned interruption
There may be some instances where we are required to suspend heating and hot water supplies to fix a problem in our network.

If this is necessary, we will provide prior notice of not less than five working days of scheduled maintenance works to the system or the development heating system that interrupt the supply of heat to your home.

We’ll always aim to keep any interruption to a minimum. However, where a planned interruption lasts longer than five working days from the start time, we’ll refund you with £22.46 (£23.58 incl. VAT) per instance, payments will be no more than £336.88 (£353.72 incl. VAT) per incident.

Unplanned interruption
The heat supply will be available to the point of connection to your home’s heating system within 24 hours of the start of any unplanned interruption.

On failure to achieve this, a fixed compensation payment of £33.69 (£35.37) per instance, payments will be no more than £336.88 (£353.72 incl. VAT) per incident.

Meter repair or replacement
The meter accuracy will be maintained within the requirements and an initial accuracy is of +/-3%.

If we fail to replace a faulty meter 28 days after a fault is shown to exist, we will refund you with £28.07 (£29.47 incl. VAT) per instance, if claimed by you within 3 months payments will be no more than £224.59 (£235.82) per Service Period.

Exceptional circumstances – times when our Service Standards won’t apply

Please note, our Service Standards won’t apply in the following exceptional circumstances:

• We are required by law to shut down the system or the development heating system provided that the need to shut it down does not relate to or arise out of any breach of your agreement with us or any negligent act or omission by us.
• We have suspended the Heat Supply because we believe on reasonable grounds that it is necessary to do so to avoid:
  • endangering the life of any person; or
  • endangering any physical property, provided that both the relevant damage to such property and its economic impact are likely to be material, provided, in each case, that the need to suspend the Heat Supply does not relate to or arise out of the agreement or any negligent act or omission by us.

Refunds
If you request a refund and we agree there’s one due, we’ll credit your bank account within ten working days. If we fail to meet this deadline, we’ll credit your account with an additional £20 on top of refunding you of course. Such payments will be not more than £200 per Service Period.

In accordance with our agreement with you, SDEN is responsible for conducting inspections of your HIU, which shall not be more frequent than once in every three years.

Yes. Heat will be supplied from a continuous source, with boilers that we operate which are located on your development providing security when the sources of low carbon heat (such as the ERF) are not available during maintenance periods.

At times, we may need to carry out essential maintenance to the system, meaning that service may be disrupted for short periods of time. Advanced notification of any planned shutdowns will be provided to customers in accordance with your Residential Supply Agreement.

No. SDEN just supplies the hot water for heating your home and your hot water. Your property does not have gas. Electricity and Water are supplied to your home by your chosen supplier.

Our system has been designed to ensure that all residents are provided with optimum heating and hot water temperatures and anyone wishing to carry out any modifications to SDEN’s heating system in their home could risk the performance of neighbouring properties. If you wish to carry out any modifications, for example underfloor heating, we require you to notify us before any work is carried out. Please send us an email at contactus@sden.org.uk