Cwoor look at the insulation on those.

[MikeSharp01]

You may have seem pictures of the 'incident' in Hertfordshire today

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-45167570

 

Very bad news but a great way to see how a new house is built. I spent a few amusing minutes looking for evidence of the insulation. What do you make of it?

[Ferdinand]

I get the feeling that that digger is going to run away and chase some deer.

[Declan52]

It's very misleading. From the title it says the guy caused £4m worth of damage but unless every house is leveled and nothing saved it will not be this amount. Another news report had it round the £500k mark in repairs. 

[Visti]

Unfortunately that amount of insulation is very much in line with my jaded POV on developers... doesn't look like there's much difference there than the new builds I looked at 5 years ago with the bare minimum for BRegs.

[pdf27]

9 hours ago, Visti said:

Unfortunately that amount of insulation is very much in line with my jaded POV on developers... doesn't look like there's much difference there than the new builds I looked at 5 years ago with the bare minimum for BRegs.

Fuel is cheap, and most people won't pay extra for better insulation. Most of those that will probably think that with a new house they already are - which is even technically true as the building regs are much tighter now than they were historically. This being the case, why spend the money on more insulation when they could take it as profit?

[Triassic]

Ah but the silver foil and red tape stuff looks  impressive. Where do you even by that red tape, none of our local builders merchants stock red tape or the silver foil stuff, never mind air tightness tape. Mind you they do stock some very overpriced Gorrilla tape, not sure what it’s for thou.

[dpmiller]

Is the red tape not the remains of the fire barrier rolls?

[Visti]

13 hours ago, pdf27 said:

Fuel is cheap, and most people won't pay extra for better insulation. Most of those that will probably think that with a new house they already are - which is even technically true as the building regs are much tighter now than they were historically. This being the case, why spend the money on more insulation when they could take it as profit?

 

Oh the business case for it is in not in doubt. Can't fault them there. Why pay for insulation when you can get the client to pay for fuel instead. Same logic with the quality of the finish and the systems installed... they're not dealing with replacements or maintenance, so why do anything but the most basic.

 

It is just a shame that the standards are so low here in the UK. We've some of the most expensive housing in Europe despite them being on average the smallest and poorest performing. The industry is so skewed that Self-Build is a luxury, so you're pretty much forced into houses with minimal insulation unless you're as nuts as us. 

 

There's so much focus on a cure for our energy consumption and resource utilisation on this planet that we forget preventative measures are usually more effective and cheaper for all of us long term. 

 

ho hum