Scottish parliament Committee 'expert' opinion

[jamiehamy]

I was having a read through the Report for the Scottish Parliament. This committee session took  my interest for obvious reasons. 

 

As I read the transcript, the contributions from Sue Roaf kept making me wonder.

 

I've put some of the ones that stuck out, but you can access it here. Anyone have any thoughts? She covers quite a lot of what gets discussed on here - but maybe an interesting take? It's the section on Greenhouse gas emmisions - quite a long read but I'd be interested to hear what other members think of this session?

 

Jamie

 

-----------------------------------

http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=10531  

 

“Homes are incredibly important to Scotland because citizens are important to their legislators.”

 

“Now we are beginning to realise that, with the next generation of housing, we have created problems. For instance, in modern, light-weight, cheap-to-build, highly insulated timber housing with very little air movement, people are experiencing very bad indoor air-quality problems. Such houses often have big windows that do not have bits that it is possible to open. The solution is a small machine.”

 

“If we genuinely want the domestic sector to have a resilient and robust future that includes large emissions reductions, we will need to start ventilating houses naturally again, getting rid of the machines and running them on solar energy”

 

“People—myself included—can build or design houses that do not need much heat any more. That is the solution. One way of doing that is to incorporate thermal storage in the buildings, as we always used to in cavity walls, for example.”

 

“We would probably do the citizens of Scotland more of a favour if we mandated for thermal storage to provide resilient heat over time than if we tried to force them to put in extremely expensive and often inefficient and expensive-to-run heat-pump systems.”

 

“We would probably do the citizens of Scotland more of a favour if we mandated for thermal storage to provide resilient heat over time than if we tried to force them to put in extremely expensive and often inefficient and expensive-to-run heat-pump systems.”

 

“I do not know how many members have looked out of their windows and seen what I call the great eye of Sauron—the huge gas flame on the horizon—over the past week. For 10 days, millions and millions of tonnes of gas have been flared off. It looks like Mordor over there.”

 

“Singapore recently irked Elon Musk by refusing to allow Tesla cars into its market. It has done that because it does not have any renewable energy and the Tesla is a really big car that uses a lot of energy to get from A to B, irrespective of its being electric. Therefore, the simple message about the size of vehicles is critical.”

 

“There is also the point about tariffs. There might be a tariff that reflects excess wind on a particular night.”

 

“We need to take a new approach and say to designers, “When you design a new building, you need to put in a safe climate room for extreme cold, heatwaves and so on.” We can start incrementally by putting insulation into the roof of that particular room, installing double glazing to get rid of draughts and putting in a nice warm carpet. Making every building energy efficient will just not happen.”

Edited September 22, 2016 by jamiehamy
adding link

[ProDave]

Lots of contradictions there and lots of miss understanding.  I would love to know where these "lightweight, cheap to buy, highly insulated timber houses " are .

 

At least my own new house will be complete before they can mess with building regulations and demand we all install high "thermal mass"  And where was all this thermal mass in cavity wall houses? yes they were really efficient to run weren't they.
 

[jamiehamy]

Just now, ProDave said:

Lots of contradictions there and lots of miss understanding.  I would love to know where these "lightweight, cheap to buy, highly insulated timber houses " are .

 

At least my own new house will be complete before they can mess with building regulations and demand we all install high "thermal mass"  And where was all this thermal mass in cavity wall houses? yes they were really efficient to run weren't they.
 

Glad it wasn't just me! I might pop down and buy one of these new 'warm carpets' and take out the 150mm of insulation we bought. If only I knew about 'warm carpets'! 

 

I'm actually drafting an email to one of my MSPs who is on the committee as I think this 'evidence' is pretty shocking to be honest - politicians make decisions based on this stuff!

[Declan52]

Seems whoever wrote it must have skipped school and just learnt how to build houses. 

Big windows that have bits missing so you can't open them , my god. 

If you build a house that doesn't need much heat why would you build in something to store loads of heat.

I thought it was just our politicians who had a few screws loose.

[jamiehamy]

" We are getting chronic problems of overheating in Scotland "

 

"  If we genuinely want the domestic sector to have a resilient and robust future that includes large emissions reductions, we will need to start ventilating houses naturally again, getting rid of the machines and running them on solar energy "

 

 

Edited September 22, 2016 by jamiehamy

[AliG]

Link to report was missing-

 

http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=10531

 

I skimmed through it, some sensible proposals and some nonsense.

 

The weird comment about safe rooms was, I think about New Zealand, I have been a couple of times and have two friends who live there. Someone seems to have decided that the country is too warm to bother with insulation. Most of the time it is true, but when it gets cold the houses are freezing. I think this was a suggested solution to that problem, but was irrelevant to the discussion.

 

A couple of things I would note -

 

1. Politicians don't seem interested in looking at actual evidence. People should be presenting scientific studies, not personal opinion.

 

2. Why was no one there from industry. The presenters were all academics and special interest groups. There seems to be a view that companies and professionals are biassed. In reality everyone can be biassed, hence the need for proper controlled studies.

 

In fairness most of the building regs are much more sensible than what was discussed here. They were probably drawn up by actual professionals who know what they are talking about.

 

[jack]

9 minutes ago, AliG said:

The weird comment about safe rooms was, I think about New Zealand, I have been a couple of times and have two friends who live there. Someone seems to have decided that the country is too warm to bother with insulation. Most of the time it is true, but when it gets cold the houses are freezing.

 

This sounds a bit like what we used to do when it was too hot to sleep in Australia - move to the lounge, which was the only airconditioned room in the (largely uninsulated, timber framed) house.  This is basically the same idea, but with insulation.  

 

And yes, the house was ice cold in winter (this is in Sydney's far western suburbs, which are hotter in summer and colder in winter than central Sydney).

[Ferdinand]

Roaf (please let her have a big tough dog so the normal summons process can be reversed) made her name with The Oxford House here

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Ecohouse

 

That was 1995 and I am not sure about the numbers. Pre-passive, and I am not sure how mant PHs there are in Scotland to provide a 'plague' of problems and an evidence base.

 

There are no witnesses at all who actually build houses.

 

Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

Para 3 of her first contribution

 

Quote

Unfortunately, year on year, our buildings and houses—even the modern ones—become more challenging. The traditional Scottish house was fairly robust. It might have been leaky and fairly solid with cold bridges and so on, but the roof did not blow off. Let me look at domestic development of efficiency in the past couple of decades. In the 1990s, we had the passive house, which was rather simplistic. You put insulation around a building, stopped the airflow through the windows and doors—so you stopped the draughts—got rid of cold bridging in the structure, put in double glazing or better windows and put a machine at the centre of it. It had a lot of stringent targets, too. In the noughties, we became more interested in sustainability and there was a move to better comfort, better indoor air quality and so on.

Now we are beginning to realise that, with the next generation of housing, we have created problems. For instance, in modern, light-weight, cheap-to-build, highly insulated timber housing with very little air movement, people are experiencing very bad indoor air-quality problems. Such houses often have big windows that do not have bits that it is possible to open. The solution is a small machine. We are getting chronic problems of overheating in Scotland, which Tim Sharpe at Glasgow School of Art has done a lot of work on. That means that, eventually, more Scottish homes will be air conditioned, and that will cost. We already know that many people in Scotland cannot afford to heat their homes in winter, and they will not be able to afford to cool their homes in summer. Therefore, we have a real problem.

 

I think she is fundamentally wrong on how much energy can be saved in even existing buildings with proper work, perhaps 75%, and how much of a contribution can be made by solar panels (in Scotland FFS !!!) .

 

There is also a strong element if the various Greenies - GP, WWF, FOE - needing to take up ever more extreme positions driven by their political position. They CANNOT recognise as a matter of fundamental identity if a solution is reached, as that would be self-liquidation.

 

Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

I think it is fair to say that Roaf is criticising the passive 'approach' ie fabric first / air tightness / very high Insulation / low thermal mass / ultra low energy requirement, and that thinks it is embodied in recent changes to building regs. 

 

I think the general opinion here is that changes to building regs go nowhere near a realistic attempt to introduce passive principles thoroughly, and perhaps go 25-30% of the way before such a characterisation could be made.

 

I think the principles are embraced by most here, but that there are thought to be some quite serious weakness, not including the probable Passivehaus Institute desire to certify that all housespiders in an official PassiveHaus have exactly 8 legs of proven identical length. God help them if Shelob turns up.

 

Things that may be done differently include heat management via water circulation in the slab, and variations on the MVHR systems, and I think here we pay much attention to the issue of solar gain and potential overheating, and the detail of heating systems - ph favouring something electric in the MVHR if I recall. I am sure there are other aspects. TBH As a community of practice by people running small projects we are ahead of the official researchers in some aspects.

 

Ferdinand

Edited September 23, 2016 by Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

Can I request that anyone submitting comments to the Parliament consider posting them here 

 

Cheers,

 

F

[DavidFrancis]

Sensus - having read your comments above, I wonder what you think is a "realistic" way to build, say, an average size three-bed house?  In particular, what is required for ventilation and moisture control?  And what do you think about insulation levels and the use of triple-glazed windows?

 

 

Edited September 23, 2016 by DavidFrancis

[AliG]

My brother has been having awful condensation problems creating mould in a 13 year old flat.

 

When I visited I found that they had all the air vents in the windows closed and the en suite fan timer didn't keep it running after you switched the light off.

 

He had no idea what the vents were for.

 

I can imagine if you gave my mum a house with MVHR the notion that it shouldn't be switched off would wind her up, she is always trying to turn off the extractor fans.

 

This has made me think that there is no consistent way to pass on instructions for how everything works in a house. You might get some from the builder, but they rarely get passed on to subsequent owners. Even then the percentage of people who actually read instructions appears to be negligible anyway.

 

This is increasingly a problem as technology moves forward. Technology can do more and more for us, whether it is drive a car or ventilate a house. But often it is the case that people either don't care or can't understand how to use it, thus a lot of money is spent on technology to no benefit or even that makes things worse if used incorrectly. Unfortunately everything has to be pretty much automatic and foolproof if possible. Look at the poor guy who died in the Tesla. I would be terrified letting my wife or my dad try to use an autopilot system, it would be an accident waiting to happen.

[Stones]

I thought I had posted last night, but obviously didn't submit. My initial thought had been a significant amount of dumbing down for the audience in question, and that I wouldn't want to live in a house she had had a hand in designing.

 

However, there are some useful discussion points raised.

 

Insulation levels - we have previously discussed the cost / benefit of meeting or exceeding passive levels of insulation. When framed in terms of fuel poverty, and how much it will cost future owners to heat a property, pushing for ever higher levels of insulation and air tightness seems like a positive thing to do, but as many of us have found out, spending an extra £2K on insulation to achieve £20 or £30 a year saving in running costs doesn't make much financial sense.  Where should the burden fall - house builder or successive future owners?

 

The same applies to Heat Pumps, SAP penalises the use of direct electric as a fuel source, yet in many low energy homes, it could very well be the most practical and cost effective solution.  The only way to get around SAP is to install a heat pump, but in a house that only requires a couple of thousand kWh a year for heating does this make sense, especially when you live in an area that already produces over 100% equivalent of its electricity requirement from renewables?

 

3 hours ago, AliG said:

This has made me think that there is no consistent way to pass on instructions for how everything works in a house. You might get some from the builder, but they rarely get passed on to subsequent owners. Even then the percentage of people who actually read instructions appears to be negligible anyway.

 

This is increasingly a problem as technology moves forward. Technology can do more and more for us, whether it is drive a car or ventilate a house. But often it is the case that people either don't care or can't understand how to use it, thus a lot of money is spent on technology to no benefit or even that makes things worse if used incorrectly. Unfortunately everything has to be pretty much automatic and foolproof if possible. 

 

I actually think this is one of the biggest issues we face, but how can politicians deal with problem without being critical of the majority of the population (never a good thing when you need their support for re-election)?

Edited September 23, 2016 by Stones

[AliG]

I think it is a really serious problem. The education system spends very little time teaching practical every day life skills. Arguably this is the job of parents, but perhaps knowing how to work a computer or the workings of compound interest would be more useful to people than being able to identify an ox bow lake or a cumulonimbus cloud!

 

Last week my wife called me to say that the car was giving a warning that a tyre was flat.

 

I took her and my 9 yr old daughter and showed them how to blow up the tyres, where the sticker with the pressures was etc. Pointed out my father in law should have taught my wife.

 

I also try and persuade them to watch me fixing things like washers. Sadly I can't guarantee being around forever to do it for them.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how people use smart phones constantly and have no idea how they work or the fact that via Google they have almost every piece of information in the world available. My niece a couple of years ago marvelled as I fixed her iPhone by resetting it, like I was a technical genius. She used to spend most days asking stupid questions that could be answered by Googling. She is basically stupid, although she still should have been able to use Google.

 

This is partly driving the issue of inequality. As time moves on, education and intelligence have ever greater value relative to physical strength. I'd have frankly been useless a couple of hundred years ago! I'm not sure if everyone can actually keep up with the rate at which technology is advancing.

 

[AliG]

Staying a bit more on the topic-

 

Fabric quality is reasonably foolproof. If you build a well insulated, airtight house then it will cost less to heat pretty much irrespective of whether or not the owners know what is going on. Not PH standards, but say low B on the EPC.

 

However, MVHR needs a reasonable bit of understanding. It also needs servicing and could break down eventually. So would it be worthwhile building a house to these standards then having drip vents or some other natural ventilation system? Would they actually provide enough ventilation or do current standards depend on leakage providing accidental ventilation.

 

Or is it just not possible to build  a house that eliminates most of the costs of air leakage without resorting to MVHR?

 

 

 

 

[ProDave]

I once went into an "eco house" and thought it felt a bit stuffy.  It wasn't long before I realised the occupier, who was a tenant, did not have the mvhr turned on, and further more didn't know what mvhr was, the fact they had one, and the fact it should be turned on.

 

Certainly in the case of a rental property, you would think some pretty simple instructions wold be easy to provide.

 

I have yet to encounter this "chronic overheating" phenomena in Scotland. 
 

[Tennentslager]

Hey sensus old chap,

Stop calling people stupid idiots, it's not a nice attitude.

 

[jamiehamy]

10 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Can I request that anyone submitting comments to the Parliament consider posting them here 

 

Cheers,

 

F

I was in that sort of mood last night to fired something off. Not sure if I'll get a response. Thanks for everyones feedback - glad it wasn't jsut me. As I allude to in my email, her views are of course valid, but as 'expert opinion' to the government - I think it was woeful. The other contributors seemed to know what they were talking about and had some good ideas thankfully. But as stated elsewhere - why such a limited and unrepresentative panel?

 

Dear Mr Golden, 

 

I am contacting you following the Committee session on 20th September 2016 on 'Greenhouse Gas emmisions', at which you were present. I would normally contact Mr Greene, but as you are part of the committee I thought I would contact you in the first instance - I'm such Mr Greene will be glad to be spared another email from me. 

 

I should explain that currently, my partner and I are building our own house near Largs - and I mean building quiet literally. When reading the transcript of the session, the contributions from Sue Roaf started to make me wonder and by the end, I was rather concerned about her input as a so-called 'expert'. 

 

Why was she chosen to participate - what are her credentials in this matter that make her a choice above others who may be equally or more qualified? Also, given her long standing commitment to solar power, should an interest not have been declared? I had never heard of her previously but following my reading of the transcript, I looked into her background and found - not surprisingly - that she is a massive proponent of solar - to the point that as an expert, her opinion is clearly fairly subjective and possibly biased. 

 

In the grand scheme of things, her contribution was only one of many opinions being heard, but I would suggest that many of her claims are quite simply incorrect, or cannot be stated as fact. Others clearly were designed to promote her own agenda, rather than offer a balanced view to the parliament. 

 

Her contributions would have been really good as part of a debate, as they are in most cases, one view or side of an argument, rather than facts that can be proven conclusively. 

 

I'm not sure what can be done now, but given that we are building our own house and I'm familiar with almost all of the issues Sue Roaf raised and that so much of the evidence provided is, I believe, so flawed or subjective, I felt I should highlight this to you. 

 

Ultimately, politicians like yourself rely on such evidence when making decisions or recommendations - and so the standard of evidence should be very high. I believe Sue Roaf's falls way short - her opinion and evidence frankly is worth as much as anyone with even a basic understanding of energy efficiency and house building or design. 

 

I have provided commentary below on some of the more stand out comments below. 

 

Regards, 

 

Jamie

 

 

 

“Homes are incredibly important to Scotland because citizens are important to their legislators.”  what does this statement even mean? Has this been recorded incorrectly? This early comment drew my attention to subsequent contributions.

 

“Now we are beginning to realise that, with the next generation of housing, we have created problems. For instance, in modern, light-weight, cheap-to-build, highly insulated timber housing with very little air movement, people are experiencing very bad indoor air-quality problems. Such houses often have big windows that do not have bits that it is possible to open. The solution is a small machine.” Her view on air quality is very subjective and cannot be relied on as - the magnitude of the problem should be quantified. We, for example, are building our house to high airtightness standards and fully aware of the ventilation requirements, which are also covered in any case in the Building Regulations. Houses cannot be built without the correct ventilation systems in place - the incorrect operation of the MHRV systems is usually to blame as opposed to a fundamental failing. This 'small machine' is a very sophisticated piece of machinery that not only circulates and introduces fresh air, but recovers heat from the stale outgoing air - you wouldn't be able to gather this from Sue Roafs contribution. I would suggest she completely misrepresents the system and those 'lobbyist-driven vested interests' would be able to mount a firm and strong rebuttal to her claims,with scientific data to back it up.

 

“If we genuinely want the domestic sector to have a resilient and robust future that includes large emissions reductions, we will need to start ventilating houses naturally again, getting rid of the machines and running them on solar energy” - I am baffled why Sue Roaf refers to these as 'machines' - these are low energy Mechanical Heat Recovery and Ventillation systems. Their purpose is to do away with 'natural' ventilation as this is hugely inefficient - it is pointless building a house with high insulation and air tightness levels and then undoing all that work by opening windows or having trickle vents that let in cold air, and create draughts - something Sue Roaf refers to later. 

 

“People—myself included—can build or design houses that do not need much heat any more. That is the solution. One way of doing that is to incorporate thermal storage in the buildings, as we always used to in cavity walls, for example.” We never used to build thermal storage into cavity walls - certainly not by design. This comment baffles me. 

 

“We would probably do the citizens of Scotland more of a favour if we mandated for thermal storage to provide resilient heat over time than if we tried to force them to put in extremely expensive and often inefficient and expensive-to-run heat-pump systems.” This is a purely subjective opinion and should not be presented or taken as 'fact'. I would also love to hear how Sue Roaf plans to retrofit thermal storage in houses and measure the efficiency and cost effectiveness. 

 

 

“I do not know how many members have looked out of their windows and seen what I call the great eye of Sauron—the huge gas flame on the horizon—over the past week. For 10 days, millions and millions of tonnes of gas have been flared off. It looks like Mordor over there.” I've not checked, but suspect this is complete and utter nonsense - 'millions and millions of tonnes' in 10 days? Might be worth checking this out of course, but I think Ineos would confirm pretty quickly it's a nonsense claim. I'm surprised the Greens didn't highlight this. Incidentally, not one contributor mentioned in the analysis LPG as a fuel for combustion engined cars - something I've had in two of my cars and has virtually no support from any government, despite the far lower level of noxious gases emitted. A serious ommision from these 'experts' who think it's electric or nothing. 

 

“Singapore recently irked Elon Musk by refusing to allow Tesla cars into its market. It has done that because it does not have any renewable energy and the Tesla is a really big car that uses a lot of energy to get from A to B, irrespective of its being electric. Therefore, the simple message about the size of vehicles is critical.” This is quite simply wrong and misleading  - there is no 'simple' message and to try suggest there is, is frankly disingenuous. Maybe Sue Roaf would like to speak to Mr Musk to get the other side of her one sided (and questionable) statement.

 

“There is also the point about tariffs. There might be a tariff that reflects excess wind on a particular night.” - The less said about this comment, the better - but is the Scottish Parliament seriously relying on experts who will come out with this type of comment? Can you imagine a government or private company even considering such a proposition? Excess wind from Sue Roaf I think!

 

“We need to take a new approach and say to designers, “When you design a new building, you need to put in a safe climate room for extreme cold, heatwaves and so on.” We can start incrementally by putting insulation into the roof of that particular room, installing double glazing to get rid of draughts and putting in a nice warm carpet. Making every building energy efficient will just not happen.”

 

This final session is so riddled with inaccuracies it is almost beyond belief. Firstly - someone of Sue Roaf's standing should understand the difference between a 'roof' and a 'ceiling'. The distinction is clear, and important. Secondly, installing double glazing DOES NOT get rid of draughts. Again, someone like Sue Roaf should know this. Thirdly - there is no such thing as a 'warm carpet'. Yet - it has the feeling of warmth, but a carpet offers little insulation qualities and offers not additional heat source. Maybe I should pop down to Carpetrite and ask for one of these new 'warm carpets' and see the look I get! If only I knew about these new 'warm carpets'  - I would not have bothered putting in 150mm of XPS insulation under our new floor!

 

[ProDave]

Excellent well worded response there Jamie.

 

P.S on the subject of IQ, it is a fact that by definition, just about half the population are of below average intelligence.
 

[Ferdinand]

9 hours ago, AliG said:

My brother has been having awful condensation problems creating mould in a 13 year old flat.

 

When I visited I found that they had all the air vents in the windows closed and the en suite fan timer didn't keep it running after you switched the light off.

 

He had no idea what the vents were for.

 

I can imagine if you gave my mum a house with MVHR the notion that it shouldn't be switched off would wind her up, she is always trying to turn off the extractor fans.

 

This has made me think that there is no consistent way to pass on instructions for how everything works in a house. You might get some from the builder, but they rarely get passed on to subsequent owners. Even then the percentage of people who actually read instructions appears to be negligible anyway.

 

This is increasingly a problem as technology moves forward. Technology can do more and more for us, whether it is drive a car or ventilate a house. But often it is the case that people either don't care or can't understand how to use it, thus a lot of money is spent on technology to no benefit or even that makes things worse if used incorrectly. Unfortunately everything has to be pretty much automatic and foolproof if possible. Look at the poor guy who died in the Tesla. I would be terrified letting my wife or my dad try to use an autopilot system, it would be an accident waiting to happen.

 

WIth your brother is that just that the knowledge needs to be general knowledge not specialised knowledge, and is down to education. Some people struggle to make a Yorkshire pudding or a pancake or a chapatti, and I wonder how many of the experienced male members of the forum would know how to apply a lipstick or an eyeshadow competently rot themselves, or walk in 3" or 4" heels. 

 

AGree with most of that, which is the joy of fabric first, and the Achilles heel of the Sustainable Homes System introduced by Mr Brown which was just too complicated. BIll of Ockham rules !

 

There is a certain advantage to making off switches difficult to reach, eg in the case of trickle fans or bathroom fans.

 

For the new kitchen/ damp proof course I was rabbiting on about before my trip to Oz (the current hotel have given me a duplex suite with a living room!) I am actually wondering about painting the walls behind the cupboards with one of those humidity controlling paints used in metal sheds fro an extra damp buffer.

 

On the Tesla, Aeroplanes use autopilot all the time of course.

 

I think the thing was that the driver was being a bit of a bonehead and he may qualify for a Darwin Award, as he was relying on a camera going into the sun and it didn't detect a white lorry. I think I am right on that.

 

I can see ways to fix that, which might be as simple as a black outline on the lorry.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited September 23, 2016 by Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

Good points Jamie.

 

Can anyone comment on whether Sue Roaf should have made clear that she is a former Local Councillor in Oxford, involved in I think the ruling party. I don't know the detail of committee procedures at Holyrood. I see that more as affecting her status as an independent witness rather than the particular affiliation, since her views may be affected by that affiliation.

 

Up to 2007 I think.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited September 24, 2016 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

Re OFF switches, as a former landlord, I realised very early on that you had to physically remove and bypass any fan isolator switched so it was not possible to turn the bathroom fan off. Otherwise it was normal for a tenant to turn the fan off because it was too noisy and ran on for too long after using the bathroom.  Then they would complain about the mould and expect the landlord to "fix it"
 

[Ferdinand]

36 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Re OFF switches, as a former landlord, I realised very early on that you had to physically remove and bypass any fan isolator switched so it was not possible to turn the bathroom fan off. Otherwise it was normal for a tenant to turn the fan off because it was too noisy and ran on for too long after using the bathroom.  Then they would complain about the mould and expect the landlord to "fix it"
 

 

WHich then puts you into potential conflict with the Council, when their officer tries to decide whether it is lifestyle condensation, lack of ventilation, penetrating damp etc and whose fault it is.

 

And the Officer may have been on a 2 or 3 day training course to learn how to evaluate, assess and enforce the HHSRS which is a Health and Safety Standard supported by about 500 pages of docs which will take that long just to read once, covering everything from trips and slips to asbestos to electric installations and damp.

 

Then if the officer does enforce, it may be and informal demand to do things a LL does not have to do in law, on a timescale shorter than it takes to book a tradsman locally - though they may be open to reasonable discussion.

 

But if they send a formal notice the admin fees a start at about £400.

 

And then it will have to be declared on a license application, which may mean a condition to have a professional manager, which will top slice 12-13% off the top of the turnover for all properties, which for normal rentals may be nearly all the profit !

 

F

Edited September 24, 2016 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

^^ and you wonder why I am not sorry to no longer be a landlord.

 

I had one tenant who complained of water running down the walls. the fans were off, the heating was off, so the place was cold, the windows and vents were all shut, and every room had wet washing hanging up everywhere.  thankfully that one didn't stay long, and never had a problem like that again.