More Than Living

UK’s housing stock green enough?">Can retrofitting make the UK’s housing stock green enough?

There are cur­rently 26 mil­lion homes in the UK, with some 85% of them expec­ted to remain lived-​​in by 2050.

The major­ity of these prop­er­ties were built before we knew much about energy effi­ciency or were aware of the strain we were put­ting on our nat­ural resources; the result being that we’re left with a lot of prop­er­ties that leak heat and create high levels of emis­sions – not to men­tion cost a for­tune to keep warm.

As we look into ways of redu­cing house­hold emis­sions – which account for over a quarter of the UK’s carbon emis­sions – it seems that we can either demol­ish and start from scratch with new low carbon hous­ing or upgrade old prop­er­ties with energy effi­cient technologies.

But how pop­u­lar are these options and how prac­tical is it to drag your 1930s semi into the 21^st century?

Demoli­tion

The aver­age lifespan of today’s build­ings is 1,000 years, accord­ing to Brenda Board­man, senior researcher at The Envir­on­mental Change Insti­tute. Indeed, the demoli­tion rate dropped massively from 120,000 in 1968 to 25,000 in 2003.

Of these exist­ing UK build­ings, three mil­lion prop­er­ties carry a hazard warn­ing for excess cold under the Hous­ing Health and Safety Rating System. Board­man argues that in these cases, it may be better to demol­ish and replace them with less leaky homes.

And Board­man says that we could reduce the uptake of green­field sites if we rebuild to greater dens­ity on sites that have been cleared by demolition.

With some 75% of UK build­ings built pre– 1919 not listed or pro­tec­ted by con­ser­va­tion areas, there cer­tainly doesn’t seem to be much pro­tect­ive reg­u­la­tion stand­ing in the way of wide-​​scale demoli­tion.
But others argue that demoli­tion des­troys the mater­i­als tied up in build­ings, which could be reused, and that this solu­tion is more labour and energy intens­ive than ret­ro­fit­ting prop­er­ties with new energy-​​efficient devices.

Ret­ro­fit­ting

Ret­ro­fit­ting is a catch-​​all term for making our older homes more energy effi­cient, and is already com­monly prac­ticed. For example, many people have swapped their tra­di­tional light bulbs for low energy ones and have fitted double-​​glazed win­dows to help trap heat in the home. But house­hold­ers are becom­ing increas­ingly aware that fur­ther upgrades are required if they are to slash fuel bills and reduce emissions.

“Houses under­go­ing major refur­bish­ment now are unlikely to be refur­bished again until 2050,” says Nancy Baynes from the Energy Saving Trust (EST). “Cur­rent refur­bish­ment work has a major part to play in meet­ing the UK’s long term emis­sion reduc­tion targets.”

As an altern­at­ive to the drastic action of demoli­tion, the Gov­ern­ment and envir­on­mental organ­isa­tions are encour­aging land­lords and indi­vidu­als to modify their exist­ing houses.

Pro­fes­sional practices

The Gov­ern­ment and envir­on­mental organ­isa­tions have intro­duced a number of meas­ures and guides to encour­age build­ing pro­fes­sion­als and trades­people to green up the UK’s exist­ing hous­ing stock.

For example, every house­hold in the UK now has to install an energy effi­cient con­dens­ing gas boiler when the old one packs in, after the Gov­ern­ment rewrote build­ing reg­u­la­tions in 2005.

In Septem­ber, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Iain Wright launched Fit for the Future, a guide to ret­ro­fit­ting for social land­lords and local author­it­ies who are respons­ible for over a fifth of the UK’s hous­ing stock.

And the EST has pro­duced its own range of prac­tical guid­ance to help build­ing pro­fes­sion­als incor­por­ate energy-​​efficiency stand­ards that go beyond min­imum build­ing regulations.

Wright said: “The gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to improv­ing house­hold energy effi­ciency and redu­cing emis­sions in both exist­ing stock and new build hous­ing. This includes meas­ures such as encour­aging the fit­ting of energy saving fea­tures for exist­ing homes, and tight­en­ing the build­ing reg­u­la­tions to make all new build homes lower carbon, and zero carbon by 2016.

“But we also need people to take the prac­tical meas­ures which reduce their carbon emissions.”

DIY

Sev­eral regional ini­ti­at­ives around the UK are now using visual evid­ence of energy wastage to spread aware­ness of the prob­lem and encour­age house­hold­ers to look into energy saving home improvements.

One such pro­ject is Oxford Brooke’s DECoRuM pro­gramme, which estim­ates energy use based on spe­cif­ics such as prop­erty size, build­ing mater­i­als and number of rooms and uses thermal map­ping to show house­hold­ers how much energy is escap­ing from their homes.

For these that heed the mes­sage, fit­ting wall cavity, loft and under-​​floor insu­la­tion are some of the most com­monly adop­ted and effect­ive ways of keep­ing energy and warmth in the home.

Grey­wa­ter and rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing sys­tems are also becom­ing an increas­ingly pop­u­lar, if not more expens­ive, way of redu­cing domestic water wastage. And some are now look­ing into renew­able energy sys­tems, such as solar panels and domestic wind turbines.

Grants and freebies

Earlier this year the Gov­ern­ment announced a number of meas­ures that should help house­hold­ers cut the costs of basic energy effi­ciency improvements.

As part of the ?

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​12-​​14 04:23:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

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