A HISTORIC home with its own cave system has been brought into the 21st century with a sophisticated new renewable heating system.

While many homes have a shed at the bottom of the garden, Coed y Glyn Uchaf, near Glyn Ceiriog, has massive vaulted caves, a Site of Special Scientific Interest 100 feet high and over 120 feet deep.

The caves are inhabited by colonies of rare bats and shoals of trout, carp and even salmon, according to owners Greg Brash and Tim Dean, who bought the £450,000 property just over two years ago.

Now they’re being helped to recoup some of that outlay with an air-source heating system which in turn is powered by solar panels on the roofand that’s saving them over £740 a year in fuel bills.

The caves are the legacy of granite, slate and quartz mining up to 1907 and some of that granite went into the house, according to Hafod Renewables managing director David Jones, whose Denbigh-based firm installed the new energy system, said: “We wore out three drills in a day and a half boring one hole through the wall. It was incredibly hard. But it’s a remarkable property and now it has a reliable heating system as well.”

Greg, a procurement consultant, and Tim, an accountant who trades online in crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, both work from home so the improved heating is a big plus.

Tim said: “It’s an amazing property and we loved it from the start because of the location – and the fact that it had its own caves.”

“But the old heating system was noisy, expensive and inefficient and deliveries were difficult too and we wanted to have a more ethical energy system which was one of the reasons we switched. Now the system is much better and only half the electricity generated is needed to power the air-source system and the rest goes back into the National Grid and we even get paid for it.”