What's so great about Old Buildings?

[petromax]

...now rain power - that'd come in useful...

If you drink it or store it to put it on your garden later, you save lots of energy from having to purify more of it (or stick to beer)

[Ged]

(or stick to beer)

What d'yer mean - p1ss on the garden like?

[petromax]

What d'yer mean - p1ss on the garden like?

That as well

[ChrisGeorge]

If you drink it or store it to put it on your garden later, you save lots of energy from having to purify more of it (or stick to beer)

My late Grandad used to p1ss in an old alumunium teapot and put it on the back lawn of his house in Mossley Hill. What those old gardeners didn't know about fertilizer. . .

C

[Birdy]

grass dont half grow when yer p!ss on it

[kevin]

My late Grandad used to p1ss in an old alumunium teapot and put it on the back lawn of his house in Mossley Hill. What those old gardeners didn't know about fertilizer. . .

C

Chris,
I think that was just a kinky hobby he dressed up as gardening know-how.

[GNASHER]

What's all this p155 and wind (Waterways) got to do with old buildings ?

[Waterways]

To summarise; Life is not as simple. Would that it were - you can?t apply every bit of passive technology in any single place. Passive solar gain for one, has found no home in the UK market because it doesn?t work as well as other measures, if at all and there is much literature that will tell you so.

If you read what I wrote I said superinsulation and air-tightness is the way and passive solar third. Passive solar does work in the UK and the sun shines on every house.

To Ged, solar hot water is feasible in the UK as well. You can cut the water bills by half. Payback is another matter at the mo' but id it is stabdard the prices comes down.

It will also tell you that this and other carbon reduction measures in the UK housing market are limited by consumer recognition of ?pay-back? ie. these measures cost more than traditional methods

They do not look at the Deveci link I gave. If they are standard for new homes and improvements then it makes an impact.

Legislation (via the Building Regulations) has improved carbon efficiency at least in the short term but there are longer term deficits which the legislation does not address eg., carbon footrint of manufacture of high-tech, carbon-based, high-value insulants and composite construction boards - such as SIPS (incidentally SIPS requires ventilation which reduces the efficiency of an 'air-tight' construction;

Ventilation can be controlled. Look at the Canadian 2000 standard and the German Passiv Haus. Canadians say "Build tight, ventilate right".

needs to be (steel-)framed in anything other than extremely simple construction and claiming it needs no heating system is just a tiny-weeny bit exaggerated...). All of which points to lower-tech, lower-cost or re-cycled solutions.

Timber framed flats up to 5 floors high are being built in London. They are so well insulated no one ever uses the heating systems.

And, at the end of the day the consumer always pays; no one picks up any tabs and stays in business.

Again, none of this put any cost on house. SIP panels? Lay the base and the house is weatherproof in a few days and the fitting out can be done at any time of the year

Having said that, these measures to reduce the carbon footprint of individual buildings have nothing to do with planning environmentally sustainable cities other than to say in passing that denser cities are inherently more carbon efficient in that dwellings share heating and cooling surfaces (walls, foundations and roofs).

That is incorrect.Denser cities are not necessarily more carbon efficient if new homes in suburbs (the villages) are made of SIPs and prime transport is electric metro using supercapacitor brake regen.

Clearly, you have nothing else that might dispute the argument that lower density cities create more carbon footprint.

Read above. Carbon footprint of cities is over stated and there is no need to cram us all in like battery hens while leaving the countryside empty so a chosen few remain billionaires at our expense. Massive reductions can be done in industry and pushing freight to electric trains, coastal ships, etc.

BTW, I have looked at Milton Keynes. It?s a horrible, soulless place with no sense of place or focus and God help you if you want to walk anywhere.

You didn't read what I wrote. The MK conceptual model using a metro not high speed roads as transport mechanism. BTW, as there are few traffic jams, there is little pollution through kerbside emissions, and the over million trees planted around the grid roads negate car emissions. Travelling around the grid you see nothing except mainly trees and bushes, giving the impression nothing is there. The centre buzzes at the weekend and the suburbs (villages) have their small centres where no main roads run through and traffic calming measures exist. The people who live there love it. It is the largest shopping centre in the south east after London. The road system is the best in Europe, if not the world. The population is rising rapidly and the place is larger than Sunderland and Preston which are "cities". It is a massive success.

The MK conceptual model using a metro to mesh the suburbs, having a high density city centre and road reduced from large to small to discourage cars, would be great model for Liverpool.

[Spike]

Im gonna live in a cave a light a fire.

Woo Hoo

[lindylou]

[petromax]

Well, I reckon that really is so much p1ss and wind...

If you read what I wrote I said superinsulation and air-tightness is the way and passive solar third. Passive solar does work in the UK and the sun shines on every house...

Your superinsulation isn?t. SIP panels have a ?U-value? of 0.4 W/m2 K in laboratory conditions and without windows. UK Building Regulations require that wall construction gets DOWN to 0.35 W/m2 K ie., SIP panels may be a revelation to the energy-profligate US market but they don't even satisfy the current UK building regulations.

You claim houses made of these materials don?t need heating and so show that you don?t understand the principles of insulating material ie., they hold up heat loss just long enough for the external daytime heating cycle to take over from the night time chill. You have to put heat in in the first place!

Your air tightness doesn?t work with your ?superinsulation? which requires mechanical ventilation (you should read the stuff you swallow wholesale) and the sun don?t shine so much in the UK and even if it shone all day, the day ain?t so long in the winter, in case you hadn?t noticed.

They do not look at the Deveci link I gave. If they are standard for new homes and improvements then it makes an impact.

Probably because you wouldn?t be bothered to introduce the material, draw your own original conclusions or get people interested in it. Perhaps you didn?t understand it yourself.

Ventilation can be controlled. Look at the Canadian 2000 standard and the German Passiv Haus. Canadians say "Build tight, ventilate right".

In these very cold conditions it?s probably quite wise to close the door (and hermetically seal every crack and crevice) but it comes at an environmental cost (of mechanical ventilation/heat recovery/loss and poor air quality or both.

Timber framed flats up to 5 floors high are being built in London. They are so well insulated no one ever uses the heating systems.

Yes and this adds substantially to the cost of an otherwise 'frameless' construction and again no heat in means... for god?s sake, do you imagine the insulation heats the house up? Jeez...

Again, none of this put any cost on house. SIP panels? Lay the base and the house is weatherproof in a few days and the fitting out can be done at any time of the year

Energy saving measures cost more. Go buy some! Do you seriously think the market is so competitive that builders will cut their margins to put it in when there is almost zero appreciation of the benefit?

A single storey house constructed in SIP panels can be put up very quickly. So? And why would you wait to fit it out? What for???

That is incorrect.Denser cities are not necessarily more carbon efficient if new homes in suburbs (the villages) are made of SIPs and prime transport is electric metro using supercapacitor brake regen.

The point, made quite adequately, is that houses that are joined up share walls and therefore lose less heat. Heat loss occurs across a gradient or difference in temperature. Two houses at an equal temperature lose no heat to each other through a party wall. Similarly a first floor flat is ?insulated? by both a second floor flat above and a ground floor flat below. This is a denser configuration than a single storey house (and loses heat through every surface). Now, think about this carefully before you come back with more cr*p.

SIPs, yes we?ve talked about SIPs and I am sure brake regen is lovely but it can apply wherever

Read above. Carbon footprint of cities is over stated and there is no need to cram us all in like battery hens while leaving the countryside empty so a chosen few remain billionaires at our expense. Massive reductions can be done in industry and pushing freight to electric trains, coastal ships, etc.

Says who? You? and nobody?s talking about battery hens. We?re talking about putting people into sustainable communities at established densities on vast tracts of EMPTY and derelict land in our inner cities.

You didn't read what I wrote...It is a massive success.

Unfortunately, I most certainly did.

[Samp]

What happened to the solar miners lamp your were inventing Ged?

[Samp]

My late Grandad used to p1ss in an old alumunium teapot and put it on the back lawn of his house in Mossley Hill. What those old gardeners didn't know about fertilizer. . .

C

I bet the tea tasted awful though!

[ItsaZappathing]

Woooaaaaahhhhh. What a heavy duty thread this turned out to be.
(Swift exit...)

[Partsky]

Woooaaaaahhhhh. What a heavy duty thread this turned out to be.
(Swift exit...)

Yes, its getting as heated as the Masons thread last week. I am off too.............into the What Music are you listening to thread. Easier