£8.4bn price tag for failing energy efficiency schemes

This is crucially linked to the issue of fuel poverty. For want of effective insulation and efficient heating appliances large numbers of people cannot afford to keep warm. Lots of people living in old houses have gaps round the doors and windows as well as thin materials and single glazing which they cannot afford to replace, even with a subsidy, Many cannot afford to renew their old boilers, radiators and hot water systems and fit efficiency controls even with a grant or other assistance. Pre-1918 properties often have very high ceilings meaning that more heat is needed to make the rooms comfortable, The government has access to millions of Energy Performance Certificates for houses put on the market over the last few years. That would be a starting point for targetted intervention to devise bespoke energy-saving and cost reduction solutions for people living in such properties. The next time there is a blanket of snow over the country it would be a good idea to commission some aerial surveys and satellite imaging of the extent of heat loss due to inadequate loft insulation. No property owned by the public sector or the social housing sector should be deficient and private landlords could be incentivised to bring their lets up to standard. Apart from the downstream side of this question, there is the enormous potential saving in power generation capacity and reduction in carbon emissions if we can reduce the waste. So far we haven’t done much more than make people change their light bulbs; I know its difficult, but it’s high time there was a programme of direct prioritised intervention focussing on the greatest heat losses and the greatest needs, property by property, all over the country starting with the coldest places and the worst dwellings first.

JW – You will be pleased to know that at least one forward thinking borough has carried out an aerial survey to highlight properties without loft insulation. The downside of course is that unless people are known to be home the lack of visible heat escaping may be because it is unoccupied.

Which? is a very wealthy charity and I am advocating practical measures and have already suggested that thermal imaging teams on the ground could be a useful way to check on those 2m of houses already retro-fitted with cavity and roof insulation. However how well it has been done is a very interesting point. There are potential problems with cavity wall retro-fits that neither the contractor or the Government would wish to highlight.

As for fuel poverty firstly lets be honest and say the WHO definition includes living room temperatures of 71F which for the UK is surely a rarity in summer let alone winter. Perhaps they work on the assumption a shirt is the normal mode of attire?!

Anyway in the UK it is translated as 21C in the primary room and 18C elsewhere in the house. This is warmer than I choose to heat my house. In a cold snap I may turn on the heating [94% efficient] to 16 or possibly 18C and wear more clothing. Basically my idea is that we need to examine closely these arbitrary definition temperatures.

Secondly it is acknowledge that may elderly single people choose to live in larger properties which are more difficult to heat. And as I know through personal experience older people are loathe to spend on long term efficient heating as they expect to peg-it before they get payback.

Thirdly in my road I cold reduce all the retired folks heating bills by at least a third by suggesting they alternately visited their elderly neighbours and heat only one of two houses during the day.
Sounds radical but really it is just highlighting that their are choices to be made.

This relates really to extended families, alms houses, close communities, and people who are unwilling and unable to take any action. To say energy is expensive and that is THE problem I think is a simplistic approach.

Building passive heating houses on every development should be a requirement of every builder
and council – it may be a percentage of build and they will be more expensive – but we have to get started. The savings on running costs could be added back as an increased multiple on the income to mortgage requirement.

http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/KfWFullReport.pdf

The Germans have been doing it for decades and the above 2011 report details how they did it. The Executive Summary says it cannot be ported to the UK but from my brief reading I am not sure that it is not mainly possible.

BTW I speak as a man interested in administrative system designs as much as a man who is heavily into avoiding unnecessary running costs!

Leah is spot on. It’s time we stopped putting solid wall houses in the ‘too difficult’ box and got on with it. My view, and it probably doesn’t go down too well, is that a measure of obligation is required to overcome the inertia that exists even among people who could have work done at no, or little, cost to themselves. Trying to look at the problem rationally, and making sure that the best does not become the enemy of the good, the major issue is with pre-1918 houses; most of these have roofspaces, a large proportion are built in terraces, many still have large single-glazed windows at the back and front. In fact the amount of wall surface area to be dealt with by either internal or external insulation is usually not great [except at the ends of the terrace or pairs of semis] and the amount of heat loss through the walls might not be as great a percentage of the overall heat loss as is usually suggested. So internally lining the outside walls with suitable thermal material – it doesn’t have to be to the highest possible value – and externally cladding the exposed terrace ends would probably make quite a difference so long as the other sources of heat loss [roofspace, windows and doors] were dealt with at the same time. Some heating system improvements, draught-proofing, repairs and minor improvements, and perhaps a porch or lobby, would probably be enough to bring an old house up to an acceptable standard and an affordable level of energy consumption at a reasonable cost. Organised efficiently through an ‘enveloping’ scheme, such a programme could transform energy conservation in this country with far more social and peripheral benefits than building another power station. I remember in the early 1960’s there was an imperative to deal with London’s lethal smogs by eliminating coal-burning fires and converting them to burn smokeless fuel. This was done compulsorily by means of the statutory declaration of smoke control zones; the scheme was organised by local authorities largely at public expense using approved contractors, and the work was done whether people wanted it or not. Some people had already done their own conversions or installed gas fires or boilers and were miffed that other people who had not done so were getting their conversions done for nothing. But no credits were given or concessions made and the result was the virtual abolition of coal smoke from domestic sources over a very short timescale. I believe a similar approach is needed today in the national interest to deal with substandard homes, energy waste, fuel economy, the projected shortfall in generating capacity and reliance on foreign gas supplies, and the depletion of fossil fuels.

As the discussions so far illustrate, home heating issues and the various schemes for ‘efficiency’ simply point up the complexity and the fact that many of the underpinning assumptions are simply wrong and that one size does not fit all!

There is a historical ‘problem’ which is partly social and partly technical (simple physics). As in so many things Britain had, in the main, a different tradition to continental Europe – except for some isolated islands mostly in London but with a few outposts in other urban areas we didn’t have ‘central’ heating.

The issues of single skin walls, draughty floors and joinery and the general failure of efforts to make other than the most modern homes ‘energy efficient’ highlight the central problem. There won’t be a sensible debate until these few basic facts of history, physics and lifestyle are understood.

Until recently most homes in Britain were heated by burning something in fireplaces or stoves at various points around the home. Until the ’60s this was usually coal, after the clean air acts this shifted to gas with some electricity and a little ‘smokeless’ solid fuel. We were heated, where we were heated in the main, by RADIANT heat . . . Heat that travelled in straight lines from the burning fuel, through the air, to the first solid object it met along a straight line. The surface of the object thus hit became warmed by the radiant heat and that warmth was carried into the object by CONDUCTION in the case of the sofa warming up or by blood circulation assisting conduction in the case of the cat on the hearth rug or the person on the sofa. Everyone knew that the burning required air, they experienced drafts, the air whizzed in under and around the doors or through the airbricks that legislation required in order to allow air to enter. There was often a secondary effect of the air being warmed around objects so heated or by a jacket around the stove or gas fire but that was secondary for reasons in the next paragraphs.

Homes originally designed for burning stuff in fireplaces HAD to have air circulation and were positively designed to ensure it. But then, people were not afraid of fresh air then and the Ministry of Information was running TV adverts into the late ’60s and possibly early 70’s advising of the health benefits of open bedroom windows!

Then, along came central heating. Mostly balanced flue gas but some electric ducted air and a fair amount of night storage heating although that is not quite ‘central’. These systems rely on warming the air, there is comparatively little radiated heat even though the distribution panels are called ‘radiators’. For these to be efficient the air in the house must remain relatively static so that warm air currents distribute the heat within the rooms of the home. These homes rely on CONVECTION, the circulation of air upwards around or through the ‘radiator’ then once a little cooler back along the floor.

Most modern heating is only effective and efficient when it is employed in homes with still air, no drafts, no air bricks, cavity walls, airtight and preferably insulated floors and ceilings . . . It can be effective but less efficient when heat is lost by conduction through ‘cold’ or uninsulated walls floors or ceilings.

Surprisingly few so-called heating engineers understand the simple physics. There is little point in heating air which soon after is going to depart up a chimney or out via an airbrick or crack. The occupants will not be warmed as there is little radiation and the energy will be wasted.

Add to that the amount of our housing stock with porous lime mortar walls, the regulation air bricks top and bottom in each room, copious air leaks in floors, joinery etc. and the scale and potential cost of the problem is apparent.

There are actually two answers. One is radiant ‘spot’ heating, warming (and insulating) the person, not a vain attempt to warm the air. The other is complete re-engineering of the home to create an insulated air proof box or set of boxes. Then the problems are about moisture management and the cost of doing the job properly because half measures are not acceptable.

Solid lime mortar walls must either breath as they were designed to do or they must be encased with total weatherproofing and insulation on the OUTSIDE. Sure, it is cheaper to ‘dry line’ but then there is an internal moisture problem because the ‘dew point’ has been moved to big flat surfaces indoors, behind the insulating panels. Also, ‘wet’ walls that can’t transpire begin to degrade and spall with the effects of weathering on wet brick after a few years. Look at what happens to the sodden bricks below a damp proof course to see what happens. Of course, some idiots will champion the cheaper method, they won’t be around when the real costs emerge.

My aged parents, both in their mid 90s understood the principles of keeping themselves warm with ‘spot’ heating. They have just moved into a nursing home from their remote cottage but that was for mobility reasons. They slept in unheated bedrooms with open windows and used radiant heat at the places where they cooked, sat or washed and bathed. Of course, they did not expect to wander around the entire four bedroom house all day in just light slacks and a T shirt, they knew how to keep their backs warm and their fronts toasted.

Soooo . . . please either do the job properly or not at all. Either we should insist on measures that couple convection heating with a thorough conversion for purpose of the premises or we should opt for a policy of assisting people re-acquire old skills and help in creating ‘warmth spots’ in their homes.

I, for one, do not wish to be pushed into financing by energy bill or taxation a Mediterranean lifestyle in terms of clothing and behaviour in what is, after all, a cool temperate climate zone.

Much of the cost of putting up any kind of cladding to external walls is the cost of scaffolding, the ‘access cost’. Given that the next cost to consider is the labour cost of fixing and finishing it would seem likely that once all that is committed to the increase in cost in specifying both insulation and long term weather proofing would be a smallish percentage.

As there is little point in insulating inside only and creating problems with solid walls breathing and to insulate internally and clad with weatherproofing outside seems nonsensical it would seem logical to concentrate on developing a decent system to both insulate and weatherproof in a systematic way on the outside only.

I had suggested to me the idea of using a liquid dressing sealing the outside of an Edwardian building I own and dry lining but, again, the cost of external access and labour for the work was a substantial sum that could have been put toward the cost of doing the job properly . . . and there would still be the cost of the internal work.

In the end I always come back to the conclusion that the job should be done properly if at all and that should be a long term, high quality insulating and weather shielding external cladding or applique surfacing.

As for the BRE I don’t think they ever represented particularly good value for money. Many wrong directions taken, especially in public housing, can be laid at their door together with much policy influencing that years later seems bizarre . . . a friend who became a Professor in a substantially overlapping field quotes many examples where fads, lobbying by special interests or failure to consider lifetime performance or costs resulted in support for less than optimum choices.

As for ‘rising damp’ that is a case in point, all over Pennine England stone houses with limestone or impervious gritstone walls are being disfigured by the ‘machine gun’ scars of attempts to pump in liquid damp proof courses! Again a ‘one size fits all’ approach, again a lack of basic scientific knowledge.