Why West Midlands homes overheat
Central Birmingham has a genuine urban heat island: all that brick, tarmac and glass between the Bullring and the Jewellery Quarter holds onto warmth long after the sun has gone down, so city-centre flats and terraces stay hot through the night while the surrounding countryside cools off. The same thing happens on a smaller scale in Coventry and Wolverhampton town centres.
The housing stock does the rest. The region has street after street of Victorian and Edwardian terraces — Moseley, Kings Heath and Stirchley in Birmingham, Earlsdon in Coventry — with solid brick walls that soak up heat all day and release it into bedrooms at night. Then there is the huge belt of interwar semis around Birmingham's outer ring and across Solihull, Dudley and Walsall, where south-facing bay windows and loft conversions can make upstairs rooms hard work in a warm spell. And the newer city-centre flats in Digbeth and around Broad Street often have big windows, limited openings and no cross-ventilation at all — they are frequently the hottest homes of the lot.
A modern split-system unit deals with all of this directly, and because it is a reversible air-to-air heat pump it heats in winter too — usually far more cheaply than a plug-in electric heater. We are not going to quote prices on this page, because they vary too much with the property. Our cost guide explains what actually drives the price and what a fair quote looks like.
Older wiring, conservation areas and flats
A few local realities worth knowing before you get quotes:
- Older terraces sometimes need electrical work before a unit can go in — an inspection at minimum, occasionally a consumer unit upgrade. Our electrics guide explains how to check.
- The region has plenty of conservation areas — the Jewellery Quarter and Bournville among the best known. If you live in one, or in a listed building, check with the council before fixing an external unit to the wall. Do not assume.
- City-centre flats and anything leasehold will almost always need freeholder consent first.
Where Coolhouse is up to in the West Midlands
Straight answer: our vetted installers are currently in Hertfordshire, not the West Midlands. We are building the network out, and Birmingham is high on the list because of the size of the market — but we will not pretend we can send someone to Kings Heath next week. If you register your interest, we will tell you honestly where we have got to, and get in touch the moment we have a vetted installer covering your postcode.