Thursday, November 10, 2022

COPing out of Climate Change Protected Housing

Restoring, insuring and living in dwellings that are not climate change mitigated is far more expensive than renovating, refurbishing and re-building poorly prepared homes.

It is easy to kick the climate change can down the road but evidence of how it can affect us NOW is frightening.

The main cause of the 2022 gas price crisis has grown because of the increasing gas demand (organically, following the pandemic) and reduced gas supplies caused by the Ukraine war.

Additionally, unseasonably low wind generation in the UK (particularly in September 2021 and the winter of 2022) sometimes reduces green energy availability.

Lower pipeline gas flow from Russia to Europe (and other Europeans have similar housing problems and bigger gas supply issues), less storage capacity, and higher carbon prices have focused minds on developing carbon-reduced power. It is a narrow perspective. There is a need for a much wider view of these issues.

The home of the future will need long-term policies to keep the lights on.

Will government encourage the use of new materials and communication without wires, wifi or Bluetooth that are already appearing on the market?

Will roofs protect against heat waves without using mains power to maintain a healthy population?

In June 2022, the government introduced a new set of regulations for new housebuilders. They set new standards for ventilation, energy efficiency and heating, and state that new residential buildings must have charging points for electric vehicles.

The Federation of Master Builders says the measures will require new materials, testing methods, products and systems to be installed. Indeed so it will. The price of climate change mitigation is not cheap.

There are new government rules concerning the amount of glazing used in extensions, and any new windows or doors must be highly insulated.” The problem is that the rules will aim to reduce the size of windows that are potentially a source of a lot of solar power and, potentially, winter heating as well.


Glazing on windows, doors and roof lights must cover no more than 25% of the floor area to prevent heat loss according to the new regulations which is a rule that has already been superseded.

The regulators obviously had not seen see-through solar panes (see right Photo: Richard Lunt / Michigan State University) which need bigger windows to generate more electricity.


Some say that walls will have to be thicker in order to comply with requirements for better insulation. Alternatively, new materials may make them thinner but the building sector has not got there yet.

As properties become more airtight, the regulator says there have to be measures to ensure proper airflow, such as having small openings (trickle vents) on windows that allow ventilation when a window is closed. Tosh! Do the job properly, save the NHS billions with proper air filtration.


"In November 2021, a research team at Addenbrooke's Hospital and the University of Cambridge reported that they were able to use HEPA filter/UV steriliser air purifiers to remove most airborne traces of SARS-CoV-2 on surge wards at the hospital. The air purifiers also successfully filtered out other bacterial, fungal and viral bioaerosols (airborne particles containing living organisms).  Even pollution from traffic can be blocked."


For people extending their homes, they may be required to install a new, or replacement, heating system depending on the size of the build and have to use lower temperature water to deliver the same heat, which will require increased insulation of pipes commented insiders. Its a big rock for all these ‘experts’ to hide under. Solar water heating is getting really good. Why not use it.

So the government get 5 out of ten for initiative and 2 out of ten for understanding what is needed and possible. It can also be said that technologies are moving so fast that some of these government initiatives are passed before the ink has dried on their parchment.

Meantime we also have to consider the prospect of poor quality housing in a time of fast-expanding populations and accelerating environmental change. It will be dangerous but also a magnet for disruption by the green-eyed disadvantaged.

In the foreseeable (next 30 years), houses will need to be easily maintained and repurposed in part or whole as technologies emerge. The need and cost of structural maintenance also have to be reduced

It is not possible to think of a future house in the image of a house being built in 2022 and its close cousin that was built to house 18th-century coal miners. It is time to change.


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