MrP Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 Stop Press!! I know many of you were disillusioned with the UK house building industry but fear no longer as TW are breaking the mould and pushing the boundaries for sustainable green house building. They are now even offering double glazing!!! Not only this but 'quality insulation'!!! (What they mean by this is actually 100mm cavities). Made me smile on my rounds - good old house builders. The sad thing is they have waiting lists as long as my arm of unsuspecting buyers clamouring to buy a bog standard box about the size of a shoe box for obscene amounts of money. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 Lower CO2 emissions - than what? Double glazing - minimum allowable on new builds. Even most crappy Victorian builds have had double glazing retrofitted. Efficient boiler - again, compulsory on new builds. Water saving boiler - I don't even know what this is! Do they give you an ultra-low flow combi so that the shower stops when you turn on the kitchen tap? Quality insulation - again, to building regs, but not necessarily installed with sufficient care that it even functions that well. Then again, probably 95% of the population doesn't know or care about any of this. As a nation, we get the commodity house builders we deserve. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney12 Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 If you consider the majority of UK housing stock then "technically" all of those statements are true. I'm not saying its "right" or "honest" or "transparent" but they are correct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickfromwales Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 Yup. . Supply and demand. Try and sell someone £1000 worth of insulation and tell them it'll save £200 a year on gas and see what the knee-jerk reply is. I spec'd 200mm of cellotex under the last conservatory UFH floor, and then caught the builder actively trying to talk the customer out of doing it behind my back. Customer reported that they often didn't need to use the UFH as the tiles were quite comfortable in comparison to the ice cold existing slab inside the bungalow. "Draughty house sir? Don't worry, we'll fit much bigger rads". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 I suppose technically they say "Buying new is greener", not "Buying TW is greener than buying a new house from another builder. And that may be true, if you're comparing that to buying an older house that hasn't been retrofitted with these features. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 Bizarrely I think this is a very positive sign. Clearly TW think that they can sell houses based on lower energy consumption/Greeny-ness. For all their faults they are not a stupid company and this must mean that they think that at least a sub-section of the house buying public may be swayed by such arguments. This is a step forward from the standard view that energy efficiency comes well down the list of requirements. Now if other major construction outfits follow this lead and start to compete we may see some actual progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 We have an EPC system for houses. People when they they buy a fridge, choose one with an A++ Energy rating. The EPC seems to be largely ignored with houses. Would it not be better for them to say "All our houses will have an EPC rating of A"? then they would have to insulate them well enough to achieve that. If one mass builder did that, the others might follow and that would really drive better standards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 Do you think people really care what the energy rating of fridges etc is? A fridge freezer uses £40-50 a year of electricity. i don't think people care whether it uses a bit more or a bit less. Clearly if it used £100 they would probably notice. I am tight as anything and have no idea of the specific rating of any of my appliances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trw144 Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 14 minutes ago, AliG said: Do you think people really care what the energy rating of fridges etc is? A fridge freezer uses £40-50 a year of electricity. i don't think people care whether it uses a bit more or a bit less. Clearly if it used £100 they would probably notice. I am tight as anything and have no idea of the specific rating of any of my appliances. I only care about the energy rating of my tumble dryer as this is the one that could run up much higher bills Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 31 minutes ago, AliG said: Do you think people really care what the energy rating of fridges etc is? A fridge freezer uses £40-50 a year of electricity. i don't think people care whether it uses a bit more or a bit less. Clearly if it used £100 they would probably notice. I am tight as anything and have no idea of the specific rating of any of my appliances. We were using a very old (pre energy rating) freezer until recently. When we turned it off, our weekly electricity usage dropped by 30KWh per week. That old thing was using in the order of 1500KWh per year or nearly £200 per year. I WAS trying to find out why our usage was so high. When we buy it's replacement, I will be seeking the most eficcient I can find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 That's fair. They can't sell anything worse than an A+ now. I wonder if without this rule people would accidentally buy stuff with that kind of high costs. An A+++ is much cheaper theoretically than A+ but it is a saving off a small amount so maybe that is why people are less bothered. I suspect that many people have larger fridges and freezers than they need also as they look flash but this increases the cost. I just changed the spec for my new place as it was going to save a fortune and otherwise we would have ended up with a massive fridge that was empy most of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 We are as yet undecided for our new house. The present house has one of these double door "American style" Fridge Freezers with it's built in ice making machine and cold water dispenser (for most of the year we have a cold water dispenser already, it's called a "tap" when your water originates from a mountain loch, it's never going to be very warm). That proved very disappointing in terms of it's freezer capacity, hence why we bought the old thing out of retirement so supliment the freezer space, not realising how much electricity the thing was eating. So decent freezer space and low energy usage are the two main requirements. (Do I smell fred drift ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crofter Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 We've been through this on the forum before. For the majority of people, energy prices are an insignificant outgoing compared to mortgage payments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 Just now, Crofter said: We've been through this on the forum before. For the majority of people, energy prices are an insignificant outgoing compared to mortgage payments. Council Tax Corrected that for you (for me at least) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crofter Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 Well I did say majority of people. Not everyone is mortgage free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 Just re read the poster in the OP. Just what is a "Water Saving Boiler" How does a "boiler" use water? Unless it leaks, or boils some away, when I last looked my boiler uses no water at all. Somebody (trading standards, advertising standards?) needs to ask them to justify that statement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 @ProDave I was going to ask the same thing. Maybe you can buy them at the same place as "quality insulation" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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