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The winters are pretty mild but humid, more like Vancouver than Winnipeg. The problem is the general low quality of houses and the colossal increase in energy costs. You can't escape it by just saving a bit of energy here and there.

It's the damp, if you don't heat your home in winter here, you are going to get aquatinted with mould quickly

I've lived in several flats in London that go down to 10 or 12 dgrees if you don't turn the heating on. This is what a lot of people will be trying to live in. Bleak.

If only somebody had realised how important it might be to Insulate Britain to save people money, reduce energy usage and improve quality of life and then try to convince the authorities to fund it initially by lobbying and then by civil disobedience when they were ignored and belittled.

Presumably so we can die of heat stroke in the summer instead?

Only half joking

Presumably so we can die of heat stroke in the summer instead?

I stand to be corrected but i'm pretty sure that decent insulation keeps homes cool in summer too.

Cc @soul

Related - can you safely bury nuclear waste underground for millennia?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62677534

Has anyone been in a 'Passive House'? They are so efficient that they don't have conventional heating. Body heat and sunshine are enough https://passipedia.org/basics/what_is_a_passive_house

I've lived in several flats in London that go down to 10 or 12 dgrees if you don't turn the heating on. This is what a lot of people will be trying to live in. Bleak.

Yeh, same and I know this is a London centric forum but London is in the warmest part of the country and has a large urban heat island, for a lot of the country the heating season is months longer. Last night it went down to 6 degrees as the lowest recorded temperature in the UK.

A friend of mine built one in the Czech Republic...although his has HEPA air filtration too. It's really impressive.

Tbh, just reminds me of old style housing in the Middle East and Central/Eastern Europe (and other places of course). Thick as fuck walls and sensible sun shading.

He would make a lot of coats.

Shame he is an endangered species!

Oh and the Czech house has a courtyard and controllable air flow. All helps.

Tbh, just reminds me of old style housing in the Middle East and Central/Eastern Europe (and other places of course). Thick as fuck walls and sensible sun shading.

And communal heating

They can take some getting used to and struggle with mould if not operated correctly but show the levels of insulation we should be aiming for, shocking the we still build new houses that we know will need to retrofitted to achieve net zero, guess it's good for profits though

You can retrofit many existing houses to near passive house via external insulation.

Not sure how planning permission for that works and it's quite expensive.

Start with roof space (which you can do by yourself if mobile and healthy, Rockwool and doc from bnq), cavity fill (walls need to be good obv.), new windows if necessary.

There were some passive houses for sale in Belfast £280K though (for here that's a lot)

Cameron stopped funding for insulation in 2010 really did a lot of damage.

And retrofitting is ££££ if you are stuck for money you can do your roof space maybe but not much else, windows are 5K plus, cavity fill is 1K plus pointing fix & waterproof wall cream so £2K plus.

We might try to retrofit ours but ££££, shortage of tradespeople, have to see if it works...

Yes, we had just bought a house and went around one that came on the market. It is one of the only places that we saw/have seen since that we would have seriously considered.

I know that quite a few EU and EEA countries mandate the appropriate level of insulation and ventilation for new builds.

Switzerland for example, every room has a mandatory requirement for natural light and an opening window to the outside.

Ha.

Yeah that definitely isn't the case in the UK. Most new homes are designed to trap heat in and keep it there.

What's the issue with shooting it off to space? The risk that it might go bang on the way up and irradiate everywhere around the launch site? Pissing off aliens?

I was actually thinking recently about doing some kind of case study / analysis on Soul's house, to see whether it's unusual or typical (of decent quality new builds). A new Building Regulation - Part O for Overheating - has come in since it was built though.

It's a big shift for people to take overheating seriously in homes. Passivhaus requires low energy consumption for both space heating and cooling so takes into consideration overheating. Enerphit (the equivalent for retrofit) is quite difficult to achieve.

I'm game if you're serious :-D

Ours has a very high air tightness rating as I guess most new builds do and it just means that heat builds up and up and up. Couple that with being always in the sun - no other houses or trees blocking the house - and it's really fucking warm.

What's the issue with shooting it off to space?

Uses vast amounts of energy, even more if you want it out of earths orbit.

The risk that it might go bang on the way up and irradiate everywhere around the launch site?

Isn't the chance of a rocket launch going bang something like 1 in 100?

What's it like in the winter with the heating off?

Possibly interesting links for anyone looking into retrofit:
https://www.householdsdeclare.org/ (resources page)
https://architecturetoday.co.uk/retrofit-reimagined-festival/ (recent event - videos)
And why not if you want to get involved - https://insulatebritain.com/

I am, just need to work out some time and methods. I've seen from your posts here and there, and while your attitude is "as new builds do" and sure the specific site conditions don't help (no shade) but in my head I'm thinking "surely that's not typical?" Or more worryingly, if it is.