energy... I stand to be corrected.

[Big Jimbo]

Anybody, who is doing either a self build, or a renovation, and getting hands on, want's to do the best that they can.  I get that.

But, i have a few issues.

At the moment, a self builder, or a small developer, can slap on a few solar panels. Beef up his insulation, get his air tightness to a reasonable level, and claim to be super energy efficient, and expect lots of slaps on the back. Nothing wrong with that i hear you all say.

The problem i have with that is that Two houses have just been  passed near me. They are going to have, ASHP, solar panels. 10% better than building reg requirement for wall, floor, and roof "U" values.

They made a big deal of this on there planning application, with planning officers, local councillors etc, saying "Jolly good show" etc

My issue is that, Yes the houses are going to use less energy to run on a daily basis. Hence reduce carbon emmissions in use. Good for the planet, and all of us.......

However, they are going to be constructed primarily from concrete.... footings, floors, walls, roofs, etc. So i personally think that whatever they are going to save on carbon emmissions in use, they are going to build houses that are very carbon heavy in there construction. Hugely so.... Tutt Tutt.

I doubt very much that the carbon savings will outweigh the carbon cost........so i would put these down as bad buildings, which could be worse, but consider that the energy saving efforts that have got them a slap on the back, have been used just so they can say. "Look at us, we are so eco"

Am I wrong, and just a sad old git ?

Say i wanted to build a zero carbon house.... Nobody seems to give a toss about how much carbon i put into building the house, If i can say, "oh yah, I'm so planet aware. I've got a fabio carbon zero house" Nobody seems to care that my solar panels came all the way from china, Along with my ASHP.  My bricks from belgium, My windows from germany. etc. Equally, nobody seems to care what the carbon cost of manufacturing or transportation my goods were. I have read several articals that say that for instance.... The carbon cost of producing my solar panels, and shipping them half way around the world, will never be got back by the energy that they will generate during there lifetime... Passive houses can say, Yah, i use 80% less energy for my heating" Sod what the carbon cost of the super duper materials were to build the Passive house...  What would be better, my mud hut made from clay from my garden, with single glazed widows made of wood by my next door neighbour who cuts down his own trees from his back garden forest. My heating would be from a Combi boiler, because the gas board kindly at some time in the past put gas on my plot, Or my passive or carbon Zero house imported from Germany ????

Is the term Eco banded around too easily???

Would anybody know of anywhere that i could go to find out the true carbon cost of my proposed building ? If so i would give you a pat on the back.... I have been searching online for three days and i can only find institutions, and people that will provide me with slat on the back calcs..... I would like to see the bigger picture.

Thanks for your help..... (shall i just bugger off and become a hippie ?)

[Mr Punter]

Embodied energy of materials is what this is all about.

[Big Jimbo]

1 minute ago, Mr Punter said:

Embodied energy of materials is what this is all about.

Is that a slap on the back for me, for trying to think about the bigger picture Mr Punter ?

[Mr Punter]

Have a look at https://www.breeam.com/

and

https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Embodied_energy_in_construction

 

This is a fairly well covered theme in the industry.

[Jeremy Harris]

For commercial developments there has long been a requirement (for those seeking reasonably good assessments) to offset the embodied CO₂ in some way.  Buying carbon offsets is the way cheats do it (IMHO), but some choose to take a more direct path to offset the carbon in the build.  For example, the last programme I managed before I retired included building a big (900 people) laboratory and office building.  This was largely constructed from reinforced concrete, although it used carbon fibre reinforced concrete - foam - concrete precast cladding.  To offset the concrete we chose to plant a few tens of thousands of trees on the adjacent land.  As a consequence of that, plus the energy saving measures (good insulation, airtightness and MVHR) that building achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating (the first public sector building in the UK to do so, I believe)

[Big Jimbo]

2 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

For commercial developments there has long been a requirement (for those seeking reasonably good assessments) to offset the embodied CO₂ in some way.  Buying carbon offsets is the way cheats do it (IMHO), but some choose to take a more direct path to offset the carbon in the build.  For example, the last programme I managed before I retired included building a big (900 people) laboratory and office building.  This was largely constructed from reinforced concrete, although it used carbon fibre reinforced concrete - foam - concrete precast cladding.  To offset the concrete we chose to plant a few tens of thousands of trees on the adjacent land.  As a consequence of that, plus the energy saving measures (good insulation, airtightness and MVHR) that building achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating (the first public sector building in the UK to do so, I believe)

Mr Harris. I hoped you would pop up. I understand the cheats way, and it is better than doing nothing, but it is still a cheat. Huge, huge, huge prob 30000sqft property near me. Fella prob planted a forest in Scotland to offset, and get his slap on the back.

I just don't see that there is any incentive for me to try and do better, as nobody seems to give a toss. shame in my opinion.

[ProDave]

Isn't this what the Code For Sustainable Homes was supposed to do, even counting how far and how the workers travelled to work each day, but it was intensely paperwork heavy and unpopular.

 

If you don't like concrete, then don't use it. What is wrong with timber frame and timber cladding?

 

And for the record I hate the term "eco" and don't use it for my house. I prefer the term "low energy house" which describes it more accurately with no hint of a tree hugger in sight.

 

There is a house at the top of our road that was originally marketed as an "Eco house".  As far as I can tell the only "eco" thing about it was triple glazed windows (not particularly good ones) and solar thermal panels.  It only got an EPC rating of D, the 2 owners I have known that have lived in it complain about the high heating costs, and it is alway the first house in the road that the snow melts from the roof.

[Jeremy Harris]

It's worth looking in a bit of detail at just how great the emissions are from some of the building materials used.  Readymix concrete tends to be around 0.8kg CO₂ per tonne, so taking our concrete slab as an example, that uses around 25 tonnes of concrete, plus around another 120 tonnes in our retaining wall (!), plus another 10 tonnes for the garage slab, so a total of around 155 tonnes of concrete.  That makes the CO₂ emissions from manufacture around 124kg, which seems way too low. 

 

However, it seems that the CO₂ figure often quoted for readymix concrete fails to include the CO₂ produced when the cement used to mix it is included (bit of a major flaw there).  Cement seems to produce a LOT more CO₂ to manufacture, around 780kg/tonne.  Readymix will have around 60kg to 80kg of CO₂/tonne from the cement, so in reality the CO₂/tonne for the finished mix will be dominated by the cement figure, and for all the concrete in our build (which is a lot more than average, because of the big retaining wall) it looks like the CO₂ figure is around 11 tonnes.

 

The EPC for the house gives an annual CO₂ emission figure of -0.9 tonnes of CO₂ per year.  That means (very crudely) that the house balances out the CO₂ from the concrete around 12 years after completion, and from then on it's CO₂ negative for the remainder of its life. 

 

I could use the BREEAM Technical Standards to calculate the "pay back" time for the whole house, but it will be dominated by the concrete, I suspect, given that the rest of the house is either timber, or timber-derived (like the many tonnes of recycled newspaper insulation).

[Big Jimbo]

23 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Isn't this what the Code For Sustainable Homes was supposed to do, even counting how far and how the workers travelled to work each day, but it was intensely paperwork heavy and unpopular.

 

If you don't like concrete, then don't use it. What is wrong with timber frame and timber cladding?

 

And for the record I hate the term "eco" and don't use it for my house. I prefer the term "low energy house" which describes it more accurately with no hint of a tree huger in sight.

 

There is a house at the top of our road that was originally marketed as an "Eco house".  As far as I can tell the only "eco" thing about it was triple glazed windows (not particularly good ones) and solar thermal panels.  It only got an EPC rating of D, the 2 owners I have known that have lived in it complain about the high heating costs, and it is alway the first house in the road that the smow melts from the roof.

Pro Dave. I love timber frame, and cladding. My point is i have no real incentive to build it like that if you see what i mean.

[Big Jimbo]

7 hours ago, JSHarris said:

It's worth looking in a bit of detail at just how great the emissions are from some of the building materials used.  Readymix concrete tends to be around 0.8kg CO₂ per tonne, so taking our concrete slab as an example, that uses around 25 tonnes of concrete, plus around another 120 tonnes in our retaining wall (!), plus another 10 tonnes for the garage slab, so a total of around 155 tonnes of concrete.  That makes the CO₂ emissions from manufacture around 124kg, which seems way too low. 

 

However, it seems that the CO₂ figure often quoted for readymix concrete fails to include the CO₂ produced when the cement used to mix it is included (bit of a major flaw there).  Cement seems to produce a LOT more CO₂ to manufacture, around 780kg/tonne.  Readymix will have around 60kg to 80kg of CO₂/tonne from the cement, so in reality the CO₂/tonne for the finished mix will be dominated by the cement figure, and for all the concrete in our build (which is a lot more than average, because of the big retaining wall) it looks like the CO₂ figure is around 11 tonnes.

 

The EPC for the house gives an annual CO₂ emission figure of -0.9 tonnes of CO₂ per year.  That means (very crudely) that the house balances out the CO₂ from the concrete around 12 years after completion, and from then on it's CO₂ negative for the remainder of its life. 

 

I could use the BREEAM Technical Standards to calculate the "pay back" time for the whole house, but it will be dominated by the concrete, I suspect, given that the rest of the house is either timber, or timber-derived (like the many tonnes of recycled newspaper insulation).

Thats brill Mr Harris. You know that about your house, but the planners, politicions, decision makers etc don't. There should be some sort of recognition for your building. Perhaps i could knock you up a plaque when i get a workshop. Out of re-cycled wood of course. Certainly you will get the benefit of that, but it is still too easy to build rubbish in this country.

[Ferdinand]

There is also a language / marketing question.

 

"Meets the Building Regs" is often translated into "Build to the latest environmental standards" in the literature.

 

Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

You've highlighted a major issue, @Big Jimbo, the attitude of the planners!

 

When I started to write the Design and Access Statement for our planning application I mistakenly thought that "sustainability" meant what I'd guess most here think it means.  Sadly, in planning terms, it doesn't.  Sustainability as far as planners are concerned relates to whether the community and facilities around a proposed development are sustainable, in terms of having things like transport links, services infrastructure, road and path capacity, access to schools, hospitals etc.  There's now nothing within the planning framework anywhere (as far as dwellings are concerned) to give any preference for energy efficient homes, or those that have a low embodied energy/CO₂ content.  In the words of my planning officer "That's nothing to do with planning, we leave all that stuff to Building Control".

[Big Neil]

9 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

ustainability as far as planners are concerned relates to whether the community and facilities around a proposed development are sustainable, in terms of having things like transport links, services infrastructure, road and path capacity, access to schools, hospitals etc

 

I have thought for some time there needs to be a seperate term which describes the Environmental Capability so to speak. an EC rating if you will. So you have not only sustainability but EC also

[Declan52]

31 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

Thats brill Mr Harris. You know that about your house, but the planners, politicions, decision makers etc don't. There should be some sort of recognition for your building. Perhaps i could knock you up a plaque when i get a workshop. Out of re-cycled wood of course. Certainly you will get the benefit of that, but it is still too easy to build rubbish in this country.

There was a scheme here in NI a few years ago where if you managed to hit the low carbon target you had no rates to pay for  2 years.  If you managed a zero carbon build then it was extended to 5 years.  But like all the schemes that might actually work and maybe make a difference they closed it down. 

[Ferdinand]

44 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

You've highlighted a major issue, @Big Jimbo, the attitude of the planners!

 

When I started to write the Design and Access Statement for our planning application I mistakenly thought that "sustainability" meant what I'd guess most here think it means.  Sadly, in planning terms, it doesn't.  Sustainability as far as planners are concerned relates to whether the community and facilities around a proposed development are sustainable, in terms of having things like transport links, services infrastructure, road and path capacity, access to schools, hospitals etc.  There's now nothing within the planning framework anywhere (as far as dwellings are concerned) to give any preference for energy efficient homes, or those that have a low embodied energy/CO₂ content.  In the words of my planning officer "That's nothing to do with planning, we leave all that stuff to Building Control".

 

There will be a section in The Local Plan all about that. It was a clock-up sustainability analysis which caused our LPA to drop our land out of the Plan, which was one reason we went for a rapid Application back in 2012.

[ADLIan]

Try 'The Green Guide to Specification' available as a download from the BRE, though I think there is a cost involved. It's used as a reference document in BREEAM & Home Quality Mark (new alternative to the CfSH).

[Big Jimbo]

34 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

There was a scheme here in NI a few years ago where if you managed to hit the low carbon target you had no rates to pay for  2 years.  If you managed a zero carbon build then it was extended to 5 years.  But like all the schemes that might actually work and maybe make a difference they closed it down. 

That is exactly the sort of thing we should have, to give us an incentive to build better.

[Big Jimbo]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

There is also a language / marketing question.

 

"Meets the Building Regs" is often translated into "Build to the latest environmental standards" in the literature.

 

Ferdinand

So true.

[Big Jimbo]

Thank you all for your comments and help guys n girls.....The system stinks.... I'm have been invited by my daughter to lunch with the PM in a couple of weeks. I will see if i get a chance to bend her ear. Who is up for being the Housing Minister. ?????

[Big Neil]

38 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

I'm have been invited by my daughter to lunch with the PM in a couple of weeks

 

See what she thinks about the Kill the PM app idea I had a few weeks back!!

[Jeremy Harris]

The problem government (any government, not just this one) faces with housing regulation is that the big developers are exceptionally good at lobbying against any proposed legislation that might increase their costs.  They've been successful in watering-down proposed changes to the building regulations, that could have made our regulations as good, from an energy efficient view, as those in Ireland.  They've succeeded in having legislation like the Code for Sustainable Homes withdrawn, via pressure applied to the technical standards review.  They get away with building houses that fail to comply with the regulations because they apply a great deal of pressure to prevent any tightening of inspection regimes. 

 

To be fair, this doesn't just apply to housebuilding, and I doubt that the big building companies are any worse than any other major employer when it comes to lobbying government to get what they want.  The key problem seems to be that the general public have an illusion that they control who gets elected, and hence what policies become regulation or law, when in reality democracy doesn't exist as far as law and regulations are concerned. 

 

This shocked me when I took up my first major procurement role.  I arrived in my new office and was told I couldn't do anything until the letter from my minister arrived, giving me his delegated authority.  By mid-morning the blue envelope arrived, instructing me that I had delegated authority to spend £1.55bn to deliver a new fleet of helicopters, and that I was charged with ensuring best value for the taxpayer when doing this.  That week I set up a team to manage the fine tuning of a request for quotations, detailing the operational requirements that must be met, with the intention of getting several helicopter manufacturers in Europe to bid competitively to provide a solution that met the operational requirements.

 

A week or two later, long before we had finished drafting those operational requirements, my minister had a private meeting with the MD of a British helicopter manufacturer, and a few hours later (without telling me) he announced to the press that the contract was not going to competition, but was being awarded to the said British (bit arguable that, given they were Italian owned) company.  I only found this out when I heard the news that evening; he didn't even have the common decency to tell me.  Needless to say I got bloody angry and when I met him in London a day or so later we had a "frank exchange of views".  There was no way I could get best value for the taxpayer, as the contract had been effectively awarded before we'd even written the specification or defined the requirement.  I later found out that the reason for awarding the contract in this improper way was because the company threatened to lay off a couple of thousand people, and the minister thought that it was better to pay them off.  It made my job damned near impossible, as the MD was quick to remind me, whenever he was pushed, that he could be at Westminster within a couple of hours (using the company helo) and that he had the power to get my minister to bring me into line.

[Ferdinand]

For some reason @JSHarris is reminding me of Sir Richard Mottram:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/mar/03/labour.byers

 

To wit:

 

“The permanent secretary at the DTLR (Department of Treachery, Lies and Resignation - lack of one, in the case of Stephen Byers) has booked himself an entry in dictionaries of modern political quotations. Displaying the dry understatement, smooth urbanity and coolness in a crisis for which our alpha civil servants are so renowned, Sir Richard Mottram, Knight Commander of the British Empire, turned to a fellow mandarin and howled: 'We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department's fucked. It's been the biggest cock-up ever and we're all completely fucked.'”

 

F

 

 

[Bitpipe]

51 minutes ago, Big Neil said:

 

See what she thinks about the Kill the PM app idea I had a few weeks back!!

 

Big assumption she's even going to be there in a few weeks

 

Based on my brief doorstep chat with her, she's not big into listening ....

[Jeremy Harris]

Richard was my chairman in my last job.  Good bloke, IMHO, he wrote me a nice letter thanking me when the last programme I'd managed came to an end.

[Big Neil]

4 minutes ago, Bitpipe said:

Based on my brief doorstep chat with her, she's not big into listening

 

Probably too busy day dreaming abut dancing about in her fields of corn!!!