Buildings in the US

[SteamyTea]

7 hours ago, Mike said:

https://www.slrconsulting.com/insights/carbon-and-energy-newsletter-july-2026/

Thanks, I had forgotten that this was happening.

ETS has been quietly plodding along in the background and does not seem to have affected costs too badly.

[Bancroft]

On 01/08/2026 at 10:59, MortarThePoint said:

the average UK electricity price is 26p/kWh

Much of this is due to electric taking the majority of the tax burden - away from gas.

 

It always strikes me as odd that successive governments want better energy security (including not importing gas) but continue to hit electrical supply with the burden of taxation in order to make gas cheaper.

 

And then spend millions on offsetting wind farms for not dumping electricity on to the grid!

 

I presume they don't want to lose votes from people who still have gas boilers...

 

But, if they switched the subsidies/taxes around that would be a prime reason for people to start moving to electricity over a relatively short period of time as they got stung by higher gas prices.

[G and J]

Remember the first priority of any politician is to get re-elected.  

[Bancroft]

18 hours ago, G and J said:

Remember the first priority of any politician is to get re-elected.  

And the quote from Jean-Paul Junkers - "Every politician knows what they should do.  What they don't know is how to get elected again afterwards".

[FluxyCored]

On 31/07/2026 at 22:24, MortarThePoint said:

I found the video below and interesting watch from a UK perspective. I'm not knocking it in any way, but it highlights the difference between UK building regulations and the US. It's worth noting that they build much larger homes in the US and are much more likely to have AC. There are also many more homes in the US. In the UK, we go a long way to make our houses perform more effectively in deference to the climate impact, but we all share one atmosphere and a single US home may have an impact 3-4 times as large as a UK one and there are probably 6 times as many. It's easy to start to doubt our approach in the UK, but worth keeping an eye on the personal financial impact as well as the environmental benefit.

 

As an example, at 13:28 they show the floor insulation which is US R10 and looks to be about 50mm of XPS. R10 in UK units is a U-value of 0.57 W/m²K. Air interfaces etc may lower that to something like 0.5 W/m²K, but the limiting value for building regulations in the UK is 0.18 W/m²K and the notional value is 0.13 W/m²K. Just considering that and the larger footprint area in the US makes a huge difference. Various Google searches suggest that the average footprint in the US is over twice that in the UK. If you assume the same weather, that means they pass about 6 times a much heat through the floor as a UK house. The roof and walls also wouldn't come close to meeting UK building regulations values and are of much greater area.

 

Are we over doing it in the UK?

    

 

That is really nice. only $750,000. Over here it would be £5,000,000

[JohnMo]

1 minute ago, FluxyCored said:

That is really nice. only $750,000. Over here it would be £5,000,000

But how much of that £5,000,000 is land cost.  Wouldn't be anywhere that in Scotland - land is way cheaper and so is labour.

[saveasteading]

An interesting discussion on radio 4.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m003011r

 

Very architect heavy, but that was I interesting in itself.

 

I have new quotes... shiny buildings.....green toupee.

[FluxyCored]

On 14/08/2026 at 15:55, JohnMo said:

But how much of that £5,000,000 is land cost.  Wouldn't be anywhere that in Scotland - land is way cheaper and so is labour.

really? i wouldnt imagine so

[JohnMo]

11 minutes ago, FluxyCored said:

really? i wouldnt imagine so

See you are located in London, we bought our plot with full planning permission for just under £100k, and it's 2 acres, with views of a loch.  In London you pay more than that for somewhere park your car. Our labour cost are well below half what you would pay also.

[FluxyCored]

On 10/09/2026 at 12:43, JohnMo said:

See you are located in London, we bought our plot with full planning permission for just under £100k, and it's 2 acres, with views of a loch.  In London you pay more than that for somewhere park your car. Our labour cost are well below half what you would pay also.

Oh i see.

Lucky for some

[JohnMo]

54 minutes ago, FluxyCored said:

Lucky for some

Just personal choice really, I have lived in England, Sweden, Germany, Malaysia and Singapore but choose to live where I do.  Lots of land makes things less expensive compared to limited land, and lots of competition in London. Not sure luck comes into it, just where you want to live and work.

[Roger440]

Inclined to agree with Johnmo. Not luck, just choice. Plenty of cheapish plots about in scotland, wales and the north.

[saveasteading]

9 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Plenty of cheapish plots about in scotland, wales and the north.

Scotland is rather a general statement. Land is not cheap in or near the big cities.

Ditto Wales I'd expect, hence I'm surprised at the comment as you are stated to be in mid Wales.

Re "The North" meaning England, does the same apply, you 'Northerners'?

[SteamyTea]

Aren't land/property prices more affected by employment opportunity/wages than available land.

There are exceptions, I live in one of them. But as a general rule.

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Scotland is rather a general statement. Land is not cheap in or near the big cities.

Ditto Wales I'd expect, hence I'm surprised at the comment as you are stated to be in mid Wales.

Re "The North" meaning England, does the same apply, you 'Northerners'?

 

I am indeed in mid wales. Where i can afford what i wanted.

 

Yes, of course, if you are near Edinburgh or Cardiff then clearly to wont be cheap. I assumed that was a given.

[Gus Potter]

On 31/07/2026 at 22:24, MortarThePoint said:

found the video below and interesting watch from a UK perspective. I'm not knocking it in any way, but it highlights the difference between UK building regulations and the US. It's worth noting that they build much larger homes in the US and are much more likely to have AC.

Just a few comments for a bit of fun. 

 

Things I like about the Yanks, oh can I include Canadians?

 

1/ I love the way they often do stairs. They knock up the structural part in cheep timber. Then when all the messy trades have gone they over clad in high quality timber. 

 

2/ 

On 31/07/2026 at 22:24, MortarThePoint said:

As an example, at 13:28 they show the floor insulation which is US R10 and looks to be about 50mm of XPS

Yes when you have a big house the soil dumpling in the middle needs much less insulation. @saveasteading and I know that the majority of heat losses take place around the perimeter of the building. On a big house we will take advantage of that and insulate the perimeter more. Also take the perimeter edge insulation down to the top of a strip found if we have one. 

 

3/ USA and Canada have a huge variation in climate. They deal with the different types of soil, the presence of trees and frost protection in a different, arguably a more pragmatic way. In the UK the default position from SE's etc is to refer to the NHBC guidelines for example.. we can end up with trench fill going down to 2.4m depth, then forced down the piling route etc, just to satisfy BC and to be arguably lazy. This all costs money.  

 

On 31/07/2026 at 22:24, MortarThePoint said:

Are we over doing it in the UK?

Yes, because our politicians who are making policy are generally complete idiots. But on the other hand no, because we often in the UK have this "conscience",  for example we consider making reparation for slavery a good idea, forgetting of course it was the Brits that strove to end it. Our commitment to that apparently was absolved in 2015? We seem to also be making the mistake around this drive for energy efficiency, it's zealotry at times, but for many it just "feels good" and are happy to pay for that good feeling. Fine for some, but if you are on a low income, getting taxed to death then you may take a different view? 

 

I'm all for building energy efficient homes, but it's got to be pragmatic and evidence based for the UK in our political climate / approach which is not going to change drastically over the next few years. 

 

4/ I have learnt a lot of the stuff I know about insulated rafts and their permutations from American and Canadian text / research. A lot of that is about designing cold stores, frost penetration, soil heave and so on, then reversing the physics at times to apply to the UK climate. It's actually good fun for me to see folk on BH coming up with all these new ideas. My job is to turn these ideas into reality by say calculation. 

 

Things I don't like about the Yanks / Canadians. 

 

A/ They sell us timber and sheet materials in converted to metric material sizes. 

 

B/ They post these videos of barbecuing sides of beef and shrimp, by 1100 hrs I'm starving. 

 

Now on the upside do you fancy Welsh Rarebit? To many, it's cheese on toast. But now you can do it with sourdough, chives, unsalted butter not least. Salted butter lasts longer by the way, hence why the salting for folk that could not afford to use it willy nilly. It's changed days. 

 

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Gus Potter

[Tetrarch]

I owned a house in Florida for 17 years and I was appalled at the construction standards and methods. Mine was built in 2004, concrete pad with a timber frame and a central pair of concrete walls from which everything was hung. All the windows were single-glazed metal frame, It absolutely relied on AC to stop humidity tearing it to pieces, termite control was an insurance requirement etc etc

 

Over the years I had a number of improvements and everything was done "to code" which is their local building regs - not impressed. What was weird was that everything was the same. Every door had two holes in the same place for install, they didn't really do aluminium for doors and so every external doorframe rotted and fell apart from the external humidity and rainfall. The plumbing seemed archaic and the flapper toilet flush was an abysmal piece of engineering

 

One particular thing absolutely drove me wild. Americans are obsessed with nails, sometimes I wondered if they had ever heard of screws. My granite kitchen guy took me to see a house that was being remodelled. I was there when the brand-new factory-fresh kitchen units were installed. All the (pristine) trim was nailed into place. Where we would glue mitres they would nail them and then spend an eternity patching and filling the nail-holes with specialist fillers - I watched this being done and I could have cried.

 

I did enjoy watching the roofing done, it was just crappy felt shingles over OSB, but the speed at which those guys could work was astonishing

 

Regards

Tet