The Gas Saver

Condensing boilers are no longer news. They first appeared in the 1980s and for years were known as energy-saving boilers. They work by having a secondary heat exchanger which is used to take a load of heat out of the flue gases from the main boiler. This makes them more expensive to build and a little more expensive to install. Hence, they were seen as something of a green curio, an expensive option for those who cared about the planet, or the size of their gas bills. By 2004, they had achieved a market penetration of just 3%. Although a condensing boiler could be shown to have a very short payback (less than 5 years), people didn't want to spend an extra £250 for a condenser.

But then the building regs changed. In April 2005, Part L (England & Wales) was amended to make condensing boilers all but compulsory. Today, condensing boilers have over 95% of the new boiler market. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a prime example of government intervention raising the bar. What is more, you can source an A-rated Baxi Solo condensing boiler for just £450 (plus VAT). We were paying that much for ordinary boilers back in the 1990s. So competition and economies of scale have eroded the price differential (though some cynics will argue that quality has also been engineered out).

All in all, it makes a powerful argument in favour of legislation as the best way of increasing energy efficiency. If condensers hadn't been made compulsory, I bet that they would still cost £250 more and that market penetration would be sticky at around 3%.

Which brings me on to Zenex's Gas Saver. This is a new(ish) device which you attach to a condensing gas boiler and it draws even more heat from the flue gases and uses it to pre-heat the water going into the boiler. It is, if you like, a tertiary heat exchanger. The generic name for this is Passive Flue Gas Heat Recovery Devices (PFGHRDs) and the inventor, Chris Farrell, started Zenex to develop and market it.

In some ways, it's been a splendid success. Fitting a PFGHRD to a boiler has been demonstrated to bring about gas savings of up to 40% for hot water generation and consequently PFGHRDs are a ground-breaking British technology, recognised in Building Regulations, recommended by the Energy Saving Trust and recognised in the Green Deal.

Better still, two of our major boiler manufacturers, Baxi and Alpha, now market Zenex's Gas Saver with their own offerings. Indeed Alpha have a built-in version (The In Tec GS) so that you can install the boiler and the Gas saver in just one box.

But the Gas Saver costs. On it's own, it's over £600 to buy. Coupled with an Alpha boiler, it doubles the price of the boiler. And just like the condensing boiler pre 2005, it has a tiny market penetration. There are around 1.5million new boilers fitted in the UK each year (about 90% of these are replacements) and only a tiny fraction have Gas Savers fitted to them.

How best to change this situation? Though the savings appear to be real enough, and the payback period is again probably less than five years, the uplift in price between a condensing boiler and a condensing boiler plus Gas Saver is enough to put most casual buyers off — that's if they ever get to hear about it in the first place. Maybe the Green Deal will come into its own here, as PFGHRDs appear to meet the Golden Rule. But I can't help feeling that the answer lies in building regs enforcement.

Passivhaus Conference 2012

I have just returned from the UK Passivhaus Conference 2012, held in Nottingham. Two days of lectures, networking, eating, drinking and schmoozing in East Midlands Conference Centre and a night sleeping in the brand new Orchard Hotel next door, so new that it wasn't actually finished.

As is so often the case with events like this, you come back down slowly to earth with a huge swathe of unnoticed feelings and unformed opinions, and only gradually do you assimilate the drift of what was going on there.

Some obvious things stand out: Passivhaus is a success if measured by the number of projects underway in this country (75 underway or completed, up from very little last year), and the spread of people taking an interest has widened to include lots of businesses I had never heard of before. There is a surprising amount of interest from RSLs who are more concerned with whole-life costings than up front capital costs, and see a genuine payback in using Passivhaus principles if measuring over a 25 year period. Many of these 75 schemes involve several units: they are not all one-offs.

And there is also great interest from the schools sector and one or two offices. I also talked to a man who was sussing out whether Passivhaus would be suitable for a fire station.

If there was a theme this year, it was summed up by the number of presentations, especially on Day Two, on Post Occupancy Testing. Lots of figures, lots of graphs and lots of tables, all rather hard to take in slide shows if truth be told, but with one over-arching theme — Passivhaus delivers what it says on the tin. Whereas the building world has been bedevilled by many so-called green projects which turned out to be anything but, Passivhaus standards, if properly instigated, seem to hit their targets unerringly.

But, you might argue, we knew that already. Well, yes it's true: there have been lots of testing carried out in Germany and Austria and the reason that Passivhaus is catching on elsewhere is that it has been proven to be effective. Post Completion Testing is construction's equivalent of the Double Blind Trial — a little bit of scientific rigour brought to bear.

What's interesting about this is that it puts Passivhaus firmly into the enlightenment camp of people who believe in logic and science and physics in particular. Not all green construction resides here and there were many people there uneasy about some of the reductive nature of Passivhaus. If Passivhaus works, does it follow that we should be building compact, rectangular boxes, all clad in white render in a vaguely international style? Does engineering have to trump aesthetics every time? And what about if you want to build using more cuddly materials like straw bale, or turf roofs? Do they have a place?

Well of course they do, because there are already examples of straw-bale Passiv and very traditional, vernacular-style buildings as well. Passivhaus boxes clever here because it says it's not prescriptive, it's just a standard and that you are free to interpret it in any way you see fit. But that ignores the fact that it's an engineering standard more than an architectural one, a standard whose primary design tool is a spreadsheet (PHPP) not a drawing board. Elegance, in the world of Passivhaus, is simplicity not ornamentation, and whilst there is nothing to stop you indulging in architecture with a capital A, in doing so you veer away from the essential message.

That's not to say that, for all its scientific rigour, Passivhaus has all the answers. No, there are still questions to be resolved, primarily to do with resilience. The three corner stones of Passivhaus are insulation (lots of it), airtightness (v. tight) and ventilation (MVHR please). It works in models and it works in practice. But how will it work over the lifetime of a building? Will the airtightness be compromised by inhabitants putting in cables for their TV sets or cat flaps for their pets? Or just knocking houses about for the fun of it? And what about these ventilation units? Will they get adequately serviced? Will they continue to work as planned? Indeed, will a new certified Passivhaus circa 2012 still be a Passivhaus in 2022, or 2052? If a Passivhaus is difficult to design and build (it is) then it will surely be difficult to maintain?

This was brought out a couple of times by speakers relating what had happened to some of the social housing Passivhaus projects. Some of the tenants had tinkered (i.e. messed up) the MVHR settings, many of them had installed huge plasma TVs (Lord, help us), one kept a window open all winter long so that he could run an extension lead into the garden to power up the jacuzzi. And you could tell the ones that smoked dope from the state of their ventilation filters.

It all sounded just a tad Victorian as these well-meaning philanthropists bestowed heaven-on-earth (aka Passivhaus) on these poor saps, only to find that they are a bunch of undeserving ner-do-wells, intent on a lifestyle of drink, drugs, fatty foods and general sloth. I'm sure that's a total exaggeration, but as always, it's the anecdotes that you remember, not the graphs.

Retrofit
There was lots on retrofit. Cost and test data is still coming in from the RetroFit for the Future schemes which are now complete. It's a much more problematic area than new build because, whilst there is undoubted elegance in creating a genuinely low-energy structure, almost nothing about retrofit could be described as elegant. It's an almighty kerfuffle and it's also incredibly expensive if done to Passivhaus standards, often considerably more than starting again from scratch. This poses problem for enlightened builders because logic would seem to dictate that we would be better to demolish every inefficient house and rebuild our entire housing stock on Passivhaus principles. But of course that ain't going to happen. Not only is there extreme opposition to it from the population at large, but it's also such a vast task that no way would we be able to complete it in a sensible timescale.

What we don't know — cannot know — is what the future holds in terms of energy supply. Will we have got to grips with the supply problem by 2050? Will we have lots of low-carbon energy to burn, or will it be a precious commodity to be husbanded carefully. And how much will it cost? Without this information, we can do no more than guess at how much effort we should make to "RetroFit" our existing building stock.

Middle class paint

Great article here by Amie Tsang in the weekend's FT on Heritage Paints.

It all started when Farrow & Ball launched a National Trust range in 1991. F&B have grown from strength to strength on the back of this and last year had a turnover of £42m, and they now export to France, USA, Germany and Holland. Then along came Patrick Baty who runs Paper & Paints and who started Little Greene, a me-too business which aligned itself with English Heritage.

Then Crown and Dulux got in on the act — look for Heritage ranges — and then Fired Earth, Sanderson, Zoffany and Designer's Guild. Oh God, I'm getting lost. There's more here in a Telegraph article from 2006.

So what's the deal? Well, they cost about twice as much as ordinary paint — the going rate seems to be around £50-£60 for 5lts — but they are better made in that they have more pigments in them. At least, that is, according to Kevin McCloud. But then he has lent his name to the Fired Earth range so he just might not be a reliable reporter on such matters.

What about authenticity? Well it's here that Amie's article begins to sing because she has taken the trouble to interview a number of experts who all end up saying much the same thing. Which is pretty much that they don't really know how authentic the colours are because everything tends to fade. She quotes Helen Hughes, a paint archaeologist — there's a job I never knew existed — who says "traditionally, it was just a man with a bucket, mixing on site." Now that's how I used to make cement!

So what we get is a modern take on what we imagine traditional paints were like, but without the lead and arsenic and other nasties that were commonly used.

Does it matter that they are not authentic? Of course not. It's all a marketing exercise. What you are buying here is taste. Use these and you are unlikely to make a horrible mistake with your colour schemes. Whereas in the bad old days we used to slap on magnolia everywhere because you'd never go wrong, now you can pay the premium and use a heritage paint and it'll look cool. I'm surprised John Lewis haven't got in on the act. To date, they only sell Sanderson's paints.

Pathways to Darkness?

My interest in the energy debate knows no bounds. I have recently dedicated at least four lengthy train journeys, pouring over my trusty iPad, to reading two newly published pathways and trying to make sense of them.

I feel I deserve a medal. This stuff is not easy going and, as I look around the carriage at other people reading novels or magazines, or staring vacantly at the passing countryside, I sometimes wonder why I am doing this. I'm certainly not getting paid for it and every now and then I get overcome by the urge to doze off. Nevertheless, it is interesting, sort of, and I have a feeling that if I don't do it, no one else will.

First out of the traps is the delightfully named Less is More which, as has already been pointed out on Twitter, weighs in at an ironic 282 pages. The document - it's basically an ebook - has the imprint of the AECB. It has a foreword, an executive summary and then, on page 22, a preface by AECB chairman Chris Herring. It's principal author is David Olivier, who I have known for 30 years, and the whole project has the feel of being his magnum opus. It's full of fascinating insights and little-known facts. For instance, did you know that:

Energy efficiency measures can reduce a tram's electricity consumption by some 75% from 4 to 1kWh/vehicle.km, although doors are opened so often that winter space heating is likely to take another 0.5kWh/vehicle.km, even with reversible heat pumps.

or that Chaudes-Aigues in Central France has had geothermal district heating since the 14th century?

Less is More is full of these little teasers that make energy wonks like me trill with delight, and make you marvel at a life spent collecting such gems. But this great strength is also its weakness because somewhere in all these pages you become aware that the bigger picture is getting lost and that our pathway through the woods has become obscured by all the fascinating discoveries we have made along the way.

Because the destination of the pathway is to get to 2050 with the lights on, our homes warm and almost no carbon getting released and, in this respect, Less is More doesn't convince. It's future is something pretty similar to the one that Denmark has mapped out — there are lots and lots of references to Denmark — which involves no nuclear power and not that much in the way of renewables, but lots and lots of energy efficiency and piped heat networks. But nowhere is there an explanation of why Denmark's pathway is the one we should follow and nowhere is there an examination of whether Denmark has got it right.

Nuclear power is dismissed because the risk of an accident is uninsurable and therefore this constitutes a hidden subsidy which makes it, in turn, uncommercial. I'm not convinced by this argument either. But it's arguably beside the point, because the whole thesis is based on the idea that we simply don't need very much energy by 2050, and certainly not very much electricity. The government line — broadly speaking that espoused by David Mackay and the 2050 calculator project — is that we should decarbonise the grid and move everything towards electric powered this and that. Less is More doesn't buy into this, and pushes towards using a combination of waste heat, liquid fuels derived from surplus windpower and concentrated solar power, and a world dedicated to energy efficiency. Or negawatts, to borrow a term from Amory Lovins.

Less Is More sets out to show that negawatts are cheapest and best, and is at its strongest when describing how a future built environment might work. But negawatts will only get you so far and, for one thing, you can't really do a convincing pathway without dealing with the transport sector. If you don't electrify transport, it's hard to see where you will get the carbon savings from. Transport does get dealt with in the appendix, but the electricfy-it-all option is dismissed in favour of making what we have more efficient.

The reason for our coming to this view is that none of the post-oil options for road, sea and air transport appear attractive.

Maybe this is true, but a pathway still has to deal with this. And if it's not a complete pathway, what is exactly is it all about?

The same criticism applies to Achieving Zero, which emanates from Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, although it too bears the hand of an author, Brenda Boardman, who will be familiar to all who trawl these areas. Achieving Zero is subtitled Delivering Future-friendly Buildings so you can at once see that, like Less is More, its solutions will be somewhat skewed towards buildings — transport doesn't even get a look in here. It's also been supported by Greenpeace which may have helped with the production costs but doesn't do a great deal to establish its independence.

Not that it's slavishly following a Greenpeace line. Like Less Is More, its future scenario is non-nuclear, but it doesn't make a big thing about it because the emphasis is all on energy efficiency in our buildings. Where it differs from Less Is More is in its emphasis is on policy levers, such as using Energy Performance Certificates as both carrots and sticks to encourage building owners to undertake refurbishments. And there is an examination of Personal Carbon Allowances which just about everybody interested in this field sees as a really good idea but politically would seem to be a complete non-starter.

Achieving Zero falls into the trap of assuming that the existing housing stock can be upgraded easily. "Beyond 2025, the need for any space heating will disappear as properties are made low-energy or brought up to Passivhaus standard." I wish. This is no mean feat and I fear it would take rather more than the odd council tax rebate or stamp duty holiday. It would be simpler and possibly cheaper to demolish and rebuild every house in the UK - at a rate of around 750,000 houses per year. (Last year we built just 100,000 new homes, by way of comparison.) Methinks she underestimates the size of the task in hand, let alone the complete impracticability!

The main problem with both these publications is that they are painting a nuclear-free, energy constrained 2050 when it's now beginning to look that this may not be such a great idea. If you replace difficult to manage renewables (farmed electricity) with a steady flow of low carbon nuclear power, then the actions needed to meet 2050 obligations change drastically and the scope and depth of energy efficiency measures becomes much more manageable. With nuclear, we don't have to dig up every road in the country, we might not have to rebuild every house, we may even get away without carbon rationing. Whilst it may not be what green builders want to hear, the nuclear option is beginning to look far more achievable, far more acceptable. To my mind, this is now the big question to address and any pathway that choses to ignore it is starting in the wrong place.

The God Species

Mark Lynas has a not-so-new book out, the God Species, and I've been taking post-Xmas read. Lynas is now identified as one of the leaders of the new wave of techno-greens who have turned their backs on traditional environmental thinking and embraced science and technology as the way forward. Bring on more nukes, lots of them please, and don't get hung up about GM foods or, for that matter, over-population. It's both refreshing and thought provoking and I look forward to reading more.

The basic premise of the book is that there are a number of planetary boundaries which we cross at our peril. Lynas identifies nine of them and devotes a chapter to each. Now this concept is a variation (a significant one) on the One Planet theme developed by WWF and others, and the original Limits to Growth style thinking dating back to the 1970s.

Each chapter follows a pattern. Lynas starts by describing the science surrounding the boundary and then moves on to reflect on how we should best deal with the problem. Thus the work is part pop-science, part polemic, and the book as a whole develops a roller coaster feel to it: we chug slowly uphill as we work through the facts and then let go for a breath-taking ride as we consider what the hell we should do about it. Generally, the polemic side is much the easier read, especially when it comes to refuting his previously held (green) convictions. This mea culpa aspect lends the book something of a confessional feel which makes it highly personal and consequently very accessible, something of a triumph for this subject, which despite its importance has been seen as just a little nerdy and very male - just why are there so few women writing about climate change and planetary boundaries?

So is Mark Lynas right? Is his position midway between traditional greenery (anti nukes, anti capitalism, anti progress) and gung-ho economic conservatism ("it's all an excuse to raise taxes so bugger off and leave us alone") the answer? He has my vote and there are an increasing number of influential commentators who line up in this camp, notably George Monbiot and Stuart Brand, not to mention a large number of scientists who traditionally steer clear of policy and are therefore reluctant to put their heads above the parapet.

But whether we like it or not, the debate has become highly politicised and just because Lynas is talking sense doesn't make the way forward any easier. For me, the most interesting chapter is the one dealing with the ozone layer - planetary boundary No 9 - and the way we appear to have solved the problem. It turns out the 1986 Montral Protocol, which addressed CFC production worldwide, was not the shoe-in I'd imagined it to be and that it took an enormous amount of cajoling and political manoeuvring to get it in place. The businesses which stood to take a pasting - principally American - dragged their heels and applied spoiling tactics and the Europeans were particularly obstructive. The key to its success was American political involvement and yet this all took place during the Reagan years. America simply threatened everyone with a big stick if they didn't comply and the rest of the world meekly fell into place. And within a few years, the world has learned to cope without CFCs and the ozone layer was on the road to recovery.

It all makes for a painful contrast with the Kyoto Protocol which was negotiated ten years later. Here the Americans, despite being led by Clinton and Gore, played a wrecking game and refused to sign up to anything meaningful. Climate change negotiations have never recovered from this setback. As a trusted advisor to the president of the Maldives, Lynas had a ringside seat at the Copenhagen summit and describes graphically what happened in the final hours of negotiation - all rather depressing.

But Lynas points out that our planetary problems are all solvable and that technically it is not even that difficult. We don't have to return to the dark ages and we don't have to restrict ourselves to a one child policy. We can house, feed and heat 9 million on this planet if only we can agree a few basic house rules. We don't even have to abandon economic growth, as long as we don't transgress a number of scientifically defined boundaries. We are, as the title implies, in a position to manage the planet, but right now we seem to lack the resolve to do so.

Thus it's both an uplifting read, in that it points a direct route out of the morass we've created, but a sobering one as well in that it draws a blank on how exactly we might get there politically.

How do you assess a product like Oxyvent?

Here's an interesting press release that just landed on my desk. It's for a new plumbing product called Oxyvent. It's a box that you add onto your radiator or underfloor heating system that helps it run better, and it promises huge savings in fuel burned.

According to the PR lady, Paul Worswick, director of Oxyvent, is "very keen that Oxyvent isn't seen as some magic box of tricks as the physics behind the product is straight forward when explained." There's lots of information about on the website and a YouTube video sequence showing Paul himself with a Pimlico Plumber who is busy installing Oxyvent in someone's house. There's an FAQ and there is a brief summary of some tests carried out by Dr Tony Robinson, a lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin (the kit hails from Ireland). And there are some ringing endorsements from satisfied customers.

But what there isn't is any simple to understand explanation of what makes Oxyvent so special. It seems to turbo charge the flow rates of water through the radiators, which enables them to run cooler, but to my mind that doesn't equate to making them more energy efficient. Some where in this system there must be a trade off - an extra pump or two, another heat exchanger, something unexplained.

I'm quite prepared to accept the claims at face value, but only if there is a coherent explanation of how it all works. As it stands, the publicity poses more questions than it answers. Installing one of these is going to set you back the best part of a grand: that's an awful lot of money for something being sold on trust.

So I looked up Tony Robinson, the Dublin academic who has been testing Oxyvent. He was easy to track down so I emailed him. He got back to me in a couple of hours and what he wrote was very illuminating.

The simple answer is that under the conditions that we tested in my lab the Oxyvent system did something useful; and there is no questioning this because our experiments were well thought out, they were accurate and we are experts in this field.

We observed two things: (i) when the radiators were balanced (to give approximately 11°C temperature drop at around 75°C boiler setting) the radiators we tested showed major non-uniform distribution in temperature, i.e. very large cold regions, due to the low water flow rates, and (ii) there were large fluctuations in the radiator temperatures and power outputs due to the boiler switching on and off which caused the inlet water temperature to cycle hot and cold.

He went on. For this scenario the Oxyvent system made a difference by smoothing out the fluctuations in the main inlet water temperature and thus the power output of the radiators. It basically added thermal inertia to the system so that the radiators did not react to the switching of the boiler. Now, the water flow rate can be increased i.e. unbalancing the radiators, without large excursions in the power output, so that for a given water set point temperature the radiator power output is nearly constant with time. The knock-on effect is that with the higher flow rate the temperature distribution of the radiator is much more uniform (we used thermal imaging to show this) so that, for a given inlet temperature, the unbalanced radiator would output more power since it would be, on average, hotter. Thus, the even temperature over the radiator provides more heat (for a given water temperature) and the Oxyvent tank ensuring that there are no severe cycling of this heat combine nicely, in the sense that the boiler water temperature can be reduced, which reduces fuel consumption, whilst still outputting adequate heat that is not pulsing over time.

One might ask then why use the Oxyvent tank for this; why not just reduce the water temperature (thus saving on fuel) and turn up the flow rate (thus improving the heat spreading on the radiators and thus the power output)? The answer is that for this case, the water inlet temperature is still cycling due to the on-off nature of the boiler so that the radiators may well reach the same peak power output but will also drop to a very low one, so that on average over time the power output is much lower than the case with the Oxyvent tank which provides a much more constant inlet water temperature to the radiators, even though the boiler is cycling.

Are you any the wiser? I'm not sure I am. It makes it look like it does something, but what exactly is still hard to tell. Other experts I know had reservations, but perhaps the best comment I got was from Michael Holmes of Homebuilding & Renovating magazine. He wrote I suspect that this product is a large heat exchanger/store, so the boiler flow and return go direct from this box, which acts as a thermal flywheel. Any benefit in terms of energy saving is likely to come from increasing the amount of time the boiler is in condensing mode, and by setting the boiler to a lower output temperature so it gradually heats up this thermal store. It is not clear whether it offers direct DHW too.

I suspect there are ways to achieve the same using controls. A boiler with a modulating burner that has a second low temp output for UFH etc. might achieve the same results without the expense. A thermal store cylinder can also work as a thermal flywheel, and provide DHW on demand.

So there you have it. A product that does something but we are not really sure what. It doesn't come with any 3rd party accreditation, like a BBA certificate, so we are left with lots of customer feedback and the observations of a Dublin academic. My hunch is that there are some installations where Oxyvent may make a huge difference, but others where it may do very little. And I realise that's not very helpful either.

On Welsh Slate

Alan Smith, MD of Welsh Slate, had invited me to take a look around the famous Penrhyn slate quarry.

I got there at last on Tuesday and was immediately bowled over by the place. The scale — it's enormous. The location — it's dramatic, perched up on a mountainside at the edge of Snowdonia. The history — it's all pervasive and a little disquieting. Penrhyn has been operating for hundreds of years so comes with the feel of an industrial museum piece. But there are still hundreds of years worth of unworked seams lying in the ground, so it remains an incredibly important resource. And one which I slowly came to realise is both underused and undervalued.

My knowledge of the UK roofing market is fairly limited. Back in my days as a jobbing builder in Cambridge, we regularly used to do re-roofs of the Victorian housing and we always used to search out Welsh reclaims. This was in the 1980s, at a time when Spanish slates were just starting to appear in number. Reclaims you could buy for a similar amount but were by and large a better bet than the Spanish ones. Thinking about it, that in itself is pretty amazing, because these reclaims had already spent the best part of a century up on a roof, and they were still in pretty good nick. It was easy to test them. You just tapped the back of the slate with a hammer and if it gave a nice hollow ringing sound, it was a good'un. In a good batch, only about 5% were rejected. Any building product with a 95% recycling rate after 100 years has got to be pretty special, but back then we just took it for granted. In contrast, many of the imported slates were prone to cracking or splitting when being nailed on the battens.

Back then, we never went for new Welsh slate because there was no need. It was always said to be "too expensive" so we just went with what everybody else used, which was reclaims.

But I never really put 2 + 2 together before this week. There is a very good reason why new Welsh slate is "too expensive" and that is because after 100 years it is still better than most slate from other quarries around the world. And that's not an idle boast, it's pretty much down to the geology of Penrhyn. The slate hewn from this seam is a lot older than the competition (geoglogically, it's Cambrian) and because of this it has far fewer impurities. Consequently, it is harder and it barely degrades. It can sit on a roof, go through whatever sun, wind,rain and snow can throw at it for year after year and it barely has any effect on it at all. Thinking back on it, the roofs we were relaying in the 1980s were being relaid because the supporting timber was knackered and the slates were starting to slip. It wasn't the slates themselves which were at fault.

Even today, 100 yr old reclaimed Welsh slate is available to buy at around £28/m2: new Penrhyn slate costs around £50/m2, so this is a building product that holds 60% of its value for a century. Can you think of anything else to match this? In terms of whole life costing, it's an astonishing result. And looking at things this way, I realised this week for the first time that new Welsh slate isn't "expensive" at all. It's actually one of the biggest bargains out there.

By the end of my brief visit, I had become an advocate. In an era when everyone and their aunt is banging on about sustainable building materials, here is one that's produced on our doorstep, that lasts several lifetimes, looks fantastic, there's masses of it, and it requires almost no energy to produce. There's no baking, no firing, no moulding with cement, no manufacturing at all. Just sawing away from the rockface, cutting, splitting and finishing, much of this still done by hand because no one has yet invented a machine which can improve on the human eye. Go check it out.

Thoughts on Ecobuild 2011

I have been going to Ecobuild religiously for five years now (since before it was even called Ecobuild), and have been blogging about it in 2007, 2008, 2009 but not 2010 despite definitely being there. At least I think I was. It does all rather go in a blur.

Why go at all? Well, it proves you are still alive and well for one thing, though you have to be quite fit to survive what feels like an ordeal. This year Ecobuild moved to the Excel Centre for the first time and it took over the entire length of both the north and south halls. Though there were masses of people I know attending the event, it's now so big that it was possible to wander around almost invisible at times, as I only really know about 0.01% of the construction business in this country and the other 99.9% could just as well be commuters on the tube. Except of course the Excel Centre isn't on the tube and the delightful DLR isn't really big enough to cope with a massive exhibition like this. So getting there isn't much fun and, in truth, being there isn't that much fun either.

So I go largely for the crack. A chance to hob nob with like-minded souls and a chance to meet a few new ones, which I did. I heard some interesting tales:
• some horror stories about solar cowboys and their high pressure sales tactics (thanks Geoff)
• some insights into the world of MVHR in Ireland (it works - thanks David)
• some good news for people wanting wood burning stoves in airtight houses (check out Schiedel Chimney's Swiftair system)
• That the world of low energy lighting is now split 50:50 between LEDs and CFs. LEDs seem to be replacing halogen.
• that there are apparently more prisoners than farmers in the USA.

But EcoBuild 2012? Let's see...

Biomass splits the AECB

It's not often that a magazine makes news for what's not in it, but the winter 2010 issue of Green Building has set tongues wagging in the normally polite debating halls of the AECB, the UK's main green building movement. And at the heart of it all is our old friend biomass.

Here's the story in a nutshell. AECB founder and magazine editor Keith Hall is a big fan of biomass. He lives on a smallholding in Wales and is self-sufficient in fuel, having access to his own timber. In September, two AECB stalwarts, Alan Clarke and Board member Nick Grant (aka the PassivHaus gang) published a "discussion paper" — whatever that is — on AECB headed notepaper called Biomass - A Burning Issue. It gently but firmly put the boot into the pro-biomass argument, pointing out that burning timber actually releases far more CO2 than burning the equivalent amount of gas. The paper argued that it would be better for the environment to encourage the growth of new timber, and its use as a carbon store (in buildings, furniture, whatever): anything in fact, except burning it. And to incentivise the burning of biomass — which is what the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is setting out to do — is just plain nuts.

This was too much for Keith Hall. He wrote on the Green Building forum (which he moderates): I'm appalled that the AECB has chosen to publish this document without a wide membership review. It is a manifesto for heat pumps and fossil fuel use. Clearly they seem to think there is no place in their passivhaus doctrine for woodburning. Well that’s clear enough.

Then Keith uses his clout as editor of Green Building to put together a “Biomass Issue” which manages to all but completely ignore the Clarke & Grant paper. It's not quite been airbrushed out — it's referred to in a feature on the online forum debate — but the central argument made by Clarke & Grant is just nowhere to be seen. It’s like someone has let off a real stinker in a crowded lift and everyone is just too polite to mention it.

But the biomass debate is not going to die down just because Hall and a seemingly large cohort of AECB members don't like it happening. With the final announcement on the RHI expected shortly, the rights and wrongs of burning timber for heating are occupying the corridors of power in Westminster. It may seem all just a little obscure to ordinary mortals, but the decisions made in the coming months will set the tone for a very long time. My worry is that the agenda is being largely driven by vested interests — forestry providers, biomass plant manufacturers, power producers who want subsidies — and that the cold, hard logic of what should be done about climate change has somehow been sidelined.

I’m not exactly an objective observer here. I’ve made it plain already that I broadly agree with the rebel paper. A little wood burning here and there isn’t a problem but switching to biomass burning on an industrial scale (which is what this is all about) is illogical and counter productive because there will never be enough timber to supply more than a tiny proportion of our heating needs and the idea that it can be seen as a little closed loop all on its tod is unrealistic.

Or to put it another way, it’s fine to live a self-sufficient back-woodsy lifestyle and to use near-free biomass to heat your smallholding, but it doesn’t begin to address the global problems we are having with our carbon burning habits. If anything should be subsidised, it should be using timber in buildings, a perfect working example of carbon capture and storage. Burning it is just undoing all the good work.

Where this leaves the AECB is something which will have to be worked out next year. But the current split is — dare I say it — totally unsustainable.

The Kitchen Queen

When I started writing the Housebuilder's Bible in 1993, I had in mind to produce a long, rambly tract, the sort of thing that you might hear from someone who just happened to be propping up the bar at the Pig and Whistle. I figured that there were loads of little things that builders knew and ordinary members of the public didn't, and I set out to lift the lid on the builder's secrets.

But over the years, the tract got ever-longer and more rambly, and I found out that there were masses of stuff that builders didn't know and neither, for that matter, did I. My book seemed to enter a new phase of explaining how all these new technologies worked, and how Part X and Part Y had suddenly changed everything anyway. What started out as a piece of timeless folklore turned into a grumpy discussion paper, as I tried to figure out where exactly you stuck a heat pump or a pellet boiler when you were at home.

The internet should have taken over where my book left off but, by and large, it hasn't. Instead it appears to be mostly populated by salesmen and apparatchiks, intent on pumping out a line, and not really concerned with both the pros and the cons. Independent advice is very thin on the ground.

In the homebuilding arena, there is very little that makes me think "Wow, that's useful." There's Tony McCormick's excellent Paving Expert site which goes from strength to strength. There's an interesting site run by Mike The Boilerman which will covers many modern plumbing and heating issues, and tells a few tales. And there's a new one I have recently come across, run by Marion of Advanced Kitchen Design in Nottingham, called Majjie's Blog.

Majjie takes on a writing form that I instantly identify with. It's that bloke (or, in this case, blokette) down at the bar of the Pig and Whistle again, mixing up facts with opinions, and generally being extremely entertaining whilst also being a fund of good, hard information. Priceless.

Here's a flavour of what she writes, explaining to kitchen muppets what the difference is between solid surface and quartz composite worktops. Bloody useful if you are thinking about getting a new kitchen.

There's a lot of confusion about the man-made worktops and - to be fair - the distinctions between the different types is getting blurred now - but basically:

SOLID SURFACES

• the surface material, of solid surface worktops, varies from 2mm to 13mm thick and is fabricated onto timber or chipboard boards - or cores - to form a worktop of the desired thickness (often with, for the very thin materials, a thicker surface on the front edge)

• the surface material is softer than other types of worktop - easy to scratch - and not very heat resistant (even to the point that some of them tell you not to pour boiling water straight into the integral sinks!)

• glossy solid surfaces (presumably developed to compete with polished granite) are a nightmare to keep looking good - very easy to scratch - I wouldn't recommend them at all

• matt finish solid surfaces are warm to the touch, can have virtually invisible joins (better on some colours than others), scratches are relatively easy to remove (see latest blog!) and more serious damage can be repaired (but pure white and black colours will mark more easily than the browny, beigy mottled colours)

• for the thicker surfaces, integral sinks can be made in the same material (although not necessarily the same colour)

• solid surfaces are very hygienic (including where joined) and non-absorbent so, although they will mark and scratch, they shouldn't stain (they're often used in toilets and laboratories ... uhmm, perhaps that's not a great point to mention in their favour!). The integral sinks can also be seamlessly joined to the worktop.

• the thinner, cheaper, solid surface worktops need to be fitted to strict guidelines - otherwise they're prone to cracking - and they can't be used for unsupported breakfast bars ... but they're available as blanks, don't need templating and can be fitted on-site - so they're much cheaper (Maia, Minerelle, GetaCore, Encore etc.)

• solid surface materials - at least the more expensive, thicker, acrylic based ones, like Corian, Avonite, Hanex and LG Hi-Macs - are thermoformable and can be made into great curves in almost any dimension - you can have curvy worktops, with bull-nosed front edges, swooping down to the ground and rolling up again ... if you want to!

• the more expensive solid surfaces come in a HUGE range of colours

• solid surface material is translucent - so lends itself to creative lighting effects (especially for splashbacks)

• they're all made from mineral powders and bits, mixed with acrylic or occassionally polyester resin (the latter is nastier to work with, even less heat resistant, less thermoformable and small radius curves can be a problem - but it produces much brighter colours, is actually easier to work with and more fire resistant - the two can be mixed) ... I think! It's difficult to get definitive info. (I believe Minerelle has polyester in the mix.)

QUARTZ COMPOSITES

• quartz composite worktops are basically artificial stone - made in big 30mm thick slabs - and treated in exactly the same way as granite worktops

• they're made from 93 - 95% quartz/stone particles - just stuck together (so to speak) with acrylic resin (and pigments, pieces of mirror etc. are also added)

• they're much harder than solid surface worktops and stronger (because they're slightly more flexible) than granite ... so less likely to crack and can be cut into more complicated shapes than granite

• the big advantage of quartz composites is that they (like solid surfaces) are completely non-absorbent and hygienic (they don't need sealing like granite, to protect from curry sauce, coffee, red wine and the like) but they're VERY much more scratch and heat resistant than solid surfaces

• the disadvantage - compared to solid surfaces - is that joins are just like granite; the two ends are just butted up and any gap filled with resin/silicon. The neatness depends on the fitter.

• sinks can't be seamlessly joined (apart from a newly introduced integral sink in Silestone) - but are usually undermounted (or you can just use standard inset sinks)

• all good quality, 30mm thick, quartz composite materials are made on one type of huge (Italian-made) Breton machine, reportedly costing 12 million Euro - so there aren't that many about - and the manufacturer also provides the resin material. There isn't usually room for more than one manufacturer per country and all are keen to export, As far as I know there isn't one in the UK. Quality is governed by the quartz/stone mix, small variations in additives and the rigour of the quality control in the factory. The market leader is Silestone (made by Cosentino, Spain) - which is the only one that includes anti-bacterial Microban in the mixture - and they're very innovative with colours and using re-cycled material in their stone mixture. It's also the most expensive. The other main players are: Quarella/Pianoforte - Italy; Caesarstone - Israel; DuPont Zodiaq - USA; Compac - Portugal (but Spanish company); Cimstone - Turkey; Technistone - Czech Republic. The waters are muddied slightly, though, by own-brand names (most of which will be from one of the manufacturers already listed). Rumour has it that there are cheaper and inferior materials on the market, from China and India - not made on a Breton machine - which are not as strong and stain easily. I don't know how true that is. There is certainly a Breton machine in China and one bought in India (although I don't know if the latter is in production).

You can see now, why I write blogs - naturally garrulous when it comes to writing! (I shall now turn this into a blog, of course). The distinction between the two types of worktop is being blurred because manufacturers are bringing out thin layer quartz composites fitted to boards - in the same way as the thin, solid surface materials are - and there are also some 30mm thick, solid, solid surfaces, such as Apollo Slab Tech and Velstone . I don't know whether or not the thin quartz surfaces are still made on Breton machines ... I suspect some aren't ... and they don't have a track record yet, to see if they have problems - with cracking - or with the join between the top surface and the 30-40mm upstand at the front.

You wish you hadn't asked now, don't you!


Great stuff, Majjii. If anyone knows of anymore sites or blogs like hers, let me know and I'll pin them up in my blog roll.

Good Gracious, George, don't give up

Just back from a wet weekend in Wales, attending the AECB Annual Conference at the Centre for Alternative Technology. Star turn there was local resident George Monbiot who made great use of the fabulous clay amphitheatre (OK — lecture hall) that forms the heart of the new WISE building. George talked without notes or slides for 75 minutes in the gathering dusk, and as the evening light faded, his mood grew ever darker. I was spellbound.

Much of the content of his thoughts will be familiar to those who read his columns in the Guardian. (Or you can RSS his articles here). Copenhagen - a disaster. Cancun - don't expect anything at all. Obama can't deliver and without the USA on board there is no hope of replacing Kyoto with anything much at all. The problem is that the nation states are each arguing their particular corner and that no one is prepared to deliver anything really substantial in the way of carbon emission cuts. And for the first time the whole political process is going into reverse, as more and more people are becoming sceptical about climate change, further weakening any political resolve that once existed.

So far, so bad. That much I anticipated. But he finished with an examination of why the climate change campaign had been so spectacularly unsuccessful, concluding that at least part of the problem was that it had been conceived as a liberation movement similar to other great campaigns of the late 20th century, like feminism, gay rights, civil rights and anti-roads protests. But in reality, combating climate change isn't really like any of these other issues: it's fundamentally a rather boring economic, rational matter that the world either acknowledges and acts upon, or doesn't. There is no liberation involved anywhere. Quite the reverse.

I would go one stage further and suggest that climate change negotiations have also become bogged down with issues regarding equity of resources in general, and human wealth in particular. This is because the amount of carbon we burn is closely related to how much money we have, both as individuals and as nations. And you can't equalise the amount of carbon we all consume without equalising the wealth of nations.

That might be on the agenda for some people, but most people in the West want to stay rich, and don't want to see their wealth level down to something like they enjoy in, say, Turkey, or Brazil, or wherever we need to be in wealth terms to get our carbon habit down to an acceptable level. Now the way the climate talks are presented, this part of the agenda is pretty well hidden from us, but my guess is that people are wise to what is really going on, which is why the right is so quick to spot "communist conspiracies" and the like every time they hear the phrase "global warming."

In that sense, they are right. The debate has been shaped by the Monbiot's of this world. They have hijacked a technical issue and turned it into a moral crusade, using climate change as a vehicle to bring about a worldwide redistributon of wealth. That's not to say they aren't justified in pointing out the anomalies of carbon use across the world, but it's hardly surprising that the presentation of the issues has brought about a huge and powerful counter-reaction by the lobby groups that want to keep wealth where it is, thankyou very much.

It's not as if capitalism itself is the enemy (as someone in the audience suggested). Capitalism as a way of organisng human endeavour is full of examples of self-restraining ordinances where laws are put in place to stop free-market practices running riot. The pharmaceutical industries only exist thanks to the laws of patent; design, software and entertainment are each underpinned by copyright law, and even the arms industries concur with various conventions on what you can and can't make. And we have a working example— in the Montreal Protocol — of chemical industries stopping the use of various gases implicated in climate change. Capitalism is easily reformable, if it's seen to be in the common good.

So why is carbon reduction so intractable? Just why is it proving so difficult to get a meaningful political framework we can all sign up to? Are we all so hooked on cheap energy that we can't imagine a world without it? Does carbon underpin the very basis of Western society? Does its removal from our lives threaten our civilised values? All good stuff for another day.....

Meanwhile, you could do worse than dip into Zero Carbon Britain 2030, a CAT publication that was also given an airing at the conference.

On Hemcrete

Yesterday I saw my first Hemcrete house under construction, a large selfbuild in Kent. I managed to get to site to see the hemplime mixture getting fixed to the timber frame background, and to chat to the guys from Denstone Construction who were fixing it. Fascinating talk it was too. Denstone’s expertise is in ICFs but they are happy to try anything innovative. Hemplime is certainly innovative, but is it the future?

Where it scores, of course, is in the low-embodied energy or eCO2 as the manufacturers like to term it. For many people, low-embodied energy materials represent the future of homebuilding, more so than the technically challenging but material-blind standards such as Passive House. But the amount of effort and skill required to wrap this timber-framed in HempLime gave me pause for thought about whether it really represents a step forward. Denstone had had to design and install a shuttering system (pictured) in order to get the insulation into place: they had come up with a system based on plywood sheets held in place by rebated studs which were in turn held in place by extra long screws going into the frame. The insulation then has to be mixed on site (the hemp shiv arrives in bags, and is mixed with a lime binder), hoisted up the scaffolding, poured into place and then patted down gently with a podger.

Then it has to be left to dry. “It’s really a summer job – you wouldn’t want to do this in winter or when it’s too wet.”

On the other hand, it looks great, like nothing else you’ve seen on a building site.

What I learned at the BBA

Yesterday, I made good a promise to visit the BBA where I was the guest of Alan Thomas, the Sales & Communications Director, a stalwart of 25 years standing and, for many, the public face of the BBA.

The BBA is the largest and most important of our Third Party Accreditation bodies. It began life in 1966 (as the Agrément Board), a time when a lot of new (mostly plastic) materials were appearing in the construction industry and there was a perceived need to establish which of them were fit for purpose. It changed name to the British Board of Agrément in 1982 and today employs around 140 people, based at the same site near Watford that plays host to the BRE.

What did I learn?

• Relations between the BRE and the BBA have never been as close as was originally envisaged when they came to share the same site. They got distinctly frosty a few years back when the BRE bought WIMLAS, Wimpey’s accreditation body, and began offering a rival service. But recently, the BRE have chosen to pull out of this market and to concentrate on other things, so perhaps a thaw can take place.

• One of the things that Alan was keen to talk about was the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) which underpins the Feed-in-Tariffs and the Renewable Heat Incentive. It’s being run by Gemserv and, by all accounts, it’s becoming a bit of a rubber-stamping exercise, as there is so much kit out there that it is simply impossible to test it all thoroughly.

Hence the BBA sees a gap in the market for manufacturers and installers wanting to differentiate their products from the rest, by offering the additional security of BBA approval. The BBA have a team of inspectors out there who take the trouble to visit the Chinese factories where much of the PV is coming from and their aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff. Alan said to me: “We’ve been testing some of the PV systems coming into the UK and finding that there are issues: for instance, flashings that won’t last five years. We found one that can actually catch fire.”

• As well as microgeneration kit, they are currently testing dozens of new insulation materials. The BBA are one of only two places in the UK with a guarded hot box (the other is the National Physical Laboratory) and they are able to test the U value claims of various materials using it. Here is Alan Thomas pictured outside one of the BBA hot boxes. But U values are but one aspect of the tests. For instance, sheep’s wool has to be tested to see if it’s insect repellent and whether it reacts with metal fasteners which it might come into contact with.

• There seems to be a marked reluctance for window manufacturers to use the hot box testing to evaluate thermal performance. Most windows coming onto the market today in the UK publish performance U values which are therefore untested. Contrast this with Germany and Austria where testing is far more common. “There are 8 hot boxes in Vienna alone,” I was told. Sounds like a great opening line for a new Katie Melua song.

• Harmonised European testing remains as far away as ever. I must admit I quickly got lost in the alphabet-soup of CE markings, EOTA and ETA and BS EN nos. In theory, we should be getting pan-European standards, but in practice it seems that the member states have a long way to go to agree on this and it only applies to a very few areas so far.

• Which brings us onto another issue, Technical Barriers to Trade. Or to put it another way, is all this testing and certification there to protect consumers, or to create expensive obstacles for foreign competitors? This came to the fore recently when the revision to Part G of the building regs was held up for several months because a number of cylinder makers felt that the safety requirements being introduced were in excess of anything called for elsewhere in the EC, and the government was challenged in the European courts over this. Our govt won the day and now we have some very restrictive safety requirements for our cylinders (look at G3).

To be fair to the BBA, it’s an argument that they can’t win, as every safety inspection ever made could be said to be a “restraint of trade” by someone or other. All they can do is to carry on testing as well as they can, and hope that both manufacturers and consumers value their acumen.

• I asked Alan if the BBA had ever been successfully sued. His brow furrowed a little and he sucked his teeth and thought about it, and then replied thus: “It’s not a question I’ve been asked before but I think I can honestly say that we haven’t.” I must admit to being rather impressed at this point. He added that they didn’t exactly want to crow about it because to do so would be to invite some litigious sole to take them on, but even so it does rather suggest that they may be quite good at what they claim to be doing.

• And the BBA is not short of customers. They currently certify something like 1300 products and charge anywhere from £10k to £50k for approvals, which take anywhere from 3 months to 15 months to research and test. A BBA Certificate provides a route to market for manufacturers which might otherwise prove difficult: a building inspector or an insurance company will happily play ball with a BBA-approved product or system, whereas they may baulk at allowing something new and untested. Which is exactly what the idea was in the first place, back in 1966 when it all started.

• What’s just as interesting is that many companies succeed with new products without getting BBA approval (or any other 3rd party accreditation). There is no compulsion to get innovative products certified so it becomes a purely commercial decision for them. They have to weigh up whether the widely recognised acceptability of a BBA certificate is worth the time and expense. Some very well known names do: others don’t. Subject for further investigation, methinks.

• I asked at what point do products become so accepted that they no longer require certification. There is no hard and fast answer to this but Alan pointed out that, back in the 60s, timber frame was seen as so new that many manufacturers sought accreditation. Today, it’s become generally accepted. We discussed whether the same might happen with SIPS: Alan thought it might, but not yet, as the systems available all appear to be subtly different. He also suggested that many SIPS manufacturers were investigating whether to switch away from OSB to using Magnesium Oxide boards instead.

• The multifoil debate still bubbles away in the background. There is no doubt that TRADA’s approval of Actis, back in 1997 (was it really that long ago?) remains controversial and damaging to the whole certification business because it involved a very public falling out over how products should be assessed. The BBA has sided with the hot-box theorists (aka the BR 443 establishment viewpoint) and won’t approve multifoils for use on their own – though it accepts an increasing number to be used in conjunction with more conventional insulation products, and there was plenty of evidence of multifoils going through the testing processes at their labs.

• You can search for current BBA certificates here.

Monbiot loses plot

I can’t be alone in thinking that Dear George has been eating one too many psilocybin mushrooms, gathered from his Welsh hillside rambles. He writes with vigour and great expertise about a wide range of environmental topics, and usually his perceptions are spot on. But every now and then, he blows it big time and throws up a horror show of prejudice and ignorance. It’s a bit like discovering a favourite uncle is actually a paedophile.

He’s just done it again in this piece published in last week’s Guardian. In it he lays into the super rich for tonking around the Mediterranean in gas guzzling yachts: that’s OK, he hates the super rich. Whatever turns you off. But this is really just posturing.

His real target are the esteemed worthies of the Optiumum Population Trust: characters like Sir David Attenborough, Jane “chimpanzee” Goodall, Jonathan Porrit, James Lovelock and Sir Crispin Tickell. “It's no coincidence” he writes “that most of those who are obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive wealthy white men: it's about the only environmental issue for which they can't be blamed.”

Now the logic employed by George in his attack on the Optimum Population Trust is somewhat flakey. In fact, it’s completely flakey. As far as I can understand, he seems to be saying that poor sub-Saharan Africans may breed a lot, but they have a minimal carbon footprint and therefore don’t cause global warming. Whereas rich Westerners don’t breed nearly so much but have huge carbon footprints. QED A Rich birth will cause lots of carbon to be released whilst a poor one doesn’t, therefore rich births are bad news and poor ones don’t matter.

But the Optimum Population Trust isn’t demanding that only the poor should stop breeding. They want everyone to breed less. It is making out that there are just too many of us in all parts of the World and this will inevitably put a strain on resources and cause environmental mayhem in the long run. It’s basically saying we are headed for an enormous tragedy of the commons scenario. Added to which, the poor nations don’t intend to stay poor for ever: as their wealth increases, so will their demand for carbon intensive goods and services.

George rightly identifies the correlation between wealth and carbon intensity, but if you follow his line of reasoning to its conclusion, it seems to suggest that mass poverty is the answer.

George concludes: “Consumption can be expected to rise with economic growth until the biosphere hits the buffers. Anyone who understands this and still considers that population, not consumption, is the big issue is, hiding from the truth.”

Well, actually, no. It’s not an either/or. It’s both. The two factors are intimately connected. One isn’t more important than the other. The world could probably handle having 1 billion rich consumers living on it, but it is very doubtful that it could handle 10 billion. At the moment, we’ve got about 1 billion rich and 5 billion poor who would very much like to be rich. And the projections are that the population will grow to 10 billion sometime in the next 50 years. And the brake on population growth is projected to be widespread economic growth (for which you can read higher carbon intensity). That doesn’t seem like a recipe for a sustainable future.

As David Mackay keeps saying, do the maths. The solutions have to add up. And you can’t do the maths if you ignore the demand side of the equation.

Prince Charles v Whitehall

I watched Prince Charles’s Dimbleby lecture last Thursday. In it, he argued that economic growth had hit the buffers and that the future lay in sustainable development. Nothing new there; it’s standard green thinking.

However, it seems to have hit a raw nerve in the rest of the Establishment. Yesterday, the Times carried reports from “senior Whitehall sources” saying basically that the Prince was misguided and that his vision was fatuous. The question is, why should a senior Whitehall source be minded to offer up this stuff to the Times?

The Whitehall growth monkey has some very strange observations to make.

“Within its core, represented strongly in organisations such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, environmentalism still has an ideological greenness that does not like the way we live and does not believe this is what creates fundamentally decent society. That continues to infect the way they think about the changes that we need, so in that sense it is fundamentally wrong.”

Look at the way he uses the word “infect?” Is he worried, or what?

He goes on: “We are aiming to cut emissions by a third in the next 10 years and then by 80% in the next four decades. These things are not happening because the population has had a green psychological transformation,” he said.

“If that were true, we’d never get anywhere, we’d never have got rid of slavery or brought in seatbelts or abolished hanging. No social change is force-driven by mass psychological change. It is about government leading and people changing accordingly.”

Is he right? Reading between the lines I think he’s hinting that the Metropolitan Elite fashion and the proles are then corralled into changing their behaviour. He could have mentioned the ban on smoking in public places as a more recent example. But what if the Metropolitan Elite decides that we can’t go on pursuing endless economic growth because it’s fucking up the environment? What would the Whitehall mandarins do then? Or do the Whitehall mandarins somehow control the Metropolitan Elite, and hence the government?

Everybody knows that green living involves a bit of hair-shirting, but then so does having a recession every ten or twenty years. The reason the green arguments have such resonance at the moment is that the orthodoxy of economic-growth-at-all-costs has imploded and is failing to deliver the promised goods.

And I think the reason Whitehall is worried this time is because the government finances are in such a mess that a return to economic growth is the only way they can be baled out, and even then it will take 20 years or more. But what if economic growth refuses to come back? What if we have hit the buffers this time?

Insite 09 and a "huge surge of anger"

I spent the day at the BRE in Watford attending their Insite 09 exhibition. I went today (Tuesday) because there was a conference on the Existing Stock and, in particular, how to reduce the carbon emissions created by it. This is a debate I want to be part of.

As I pulled up at the entrance gate, I was handed a leaflet explaining where I should park. It told me I wasn’t allowed to do more than 20mph on site, that I musn’t smoke, nor should I attempt to use a mobile phone whilst driving the quarter mile through the site. It also told me not to park on the cross-hatched areas, nor the double yellow lines. And finally it warned me that if I broke any of these rules I would be asked to leave the site and my behaviour would be reported to my employers. All to get from the entrance gate to the car park at the back of the site. Welcome to the BRE.

The conference speakers were thoughtful and articulate, but I couldn’t help feeling that the suggestions being put forward were not really going to get to the root of the problem. Nick Raynsford, the Construction Industries’ pet MP, expressed his frustration with the Treasury which repeatedly refuses to pursue a more progressive taxation regime which might encourage green refurbishment.

In the Q&A I asked him if it was not now time to introduce a carbon tax on domestic energy bills: whilst the cost of petrol at the pump is nearly 70% tax, domestic fuel has just 5% added to it in VAT. His answer was informative: he suggested that the Fuel Cost Escalator had not been popular, especially when oil prices went through the roof last year, and that the government would risk facing “a huge surge of anger” if it brought in something similar on gas and electricity bills. I wouldn’t have thought that bothered the government too much. Afterall, it didn’t stop them going to war in Iraq? Or for that matter fiddling their expenses? So what’s their problem?

"The Housing Downturn" - a review

Graham Norwood is a prolific and well known property journalist who has produced a book about the state of the housing market which he has subtitled “A Guide for Estate Agents and Developers.”

There are no earth shattering revelations here but it provides a useful summary of the events of the past three years. Graham doesn’t like to use the term “Crash” for what has happened to the housing market — he suggests his journalist colleagues have debased the term — but then he buys into the notion that things will recover soon. “Even now I believe that residential prices, like oil, will rise in value over the long term and within the next decade prices will surpass those seen at the recent peak in 2007.”

What gives him such confidence in this prediction? He trots out the hoary old chestnut that there is a shortage of homes in the UK and that in the long term this lack of supply will push prices up. But he conveniently ignores the fact that this was exactly the same reason used to justify ever-rising house prices rises in the years up to 2007. If this really was the case, then house prices would never have fallen back at all. What the “correction” has shown us is that the predictions for both population growth and household formation were as much products of the long speculative housing boom as causes of it. And both these supposed “drivers” of house price rises may be just as likely to stabilise or even head south, as has happened in Germany for many years. There is no hard and fast rule that says they will continue to climb upwards for ever and a day.

And if they don’t, then there is no particular reason for house prices to bounce back to where they were in 2007, anymore than there is for the FTSE 100 to regain its previous peaks, or the oil price to go back through $147 a barrel, or wherever it got to back in the crazy summer of 2008.

The book has a good section on estate agents, a subject I don’t know much about. Apparently, Rightmove is toast. Globerix is the future, because it doesn’t charge a fat fee to the agents listing. Or maybe not. It’s not quite that simple.

And the best section of all is where Graham intrepidly goes where few reporters ever dared, to an Inside Track investor’s presentation. One of the very definite plus points of the property “correction” is that steam-ups like this can no longer happen.

On the other hand, this book itself is a very slim volume. I read it cover to cover in three sittings, totalling maybe three hours. At around £25 to buy, it’s more than a bit pricey. Nevertheless, it’s a very easy and approachable read and I feel sure it will become a valuable reference point in years to come when people try to remember what these times we are living through were like.

Try Before You Buy

I don’t know why no one has thought of this before, but it’s taken an innovative Hereford-based green oak builder, TJ Crump Oakwrights, to pioneer the concept in the UK. Not only have they constructed a showhouse, but they offer it for weekend lets to prospective customers as well. Now you can get to live the dream, even if it’s only for a couple of nights.

Ever wondered what Lutron Homeworks is like to use? Or whether you can get to grips with MVHR? Or underfloor heating? Or a body shower? Or how a boiling water tap works? Or a whole house audio system? What are these big glazed gables like at night time when the stars are out? Or in the morning when the sun shines through? Or just what it’s like to pad about barefoot in a huge hallway, with cathedral ceilings? Seeing this stuff on tele and in magazines is one thing. Staying in a top of the range show house puts a whole new perspective on it.

OK, I admit it, I was a guest. It was a favour in return for a speaking engagement at their open day. But I learned a lot and really enjoyed the weekend. Not surprisingly, the house is booked up months in advance. And also I am not surprised to find that here is a housebuilding business with a full order book.

Book Reviews: Coping with Transition

I have been reading two books this week in the slightly random, chaotic way that I tend to read books these days. Dipping in and out of them and pitching in at bits that look as though they might be interesting. Sometimes just starting where the page happens to fall open. However you read them, they make an interesting contrast.

One is Rob Hopkins Transition Handbook, the other is Tim Pullen’s Simply Sustainable Homes. In many ways, you’d think that they’d make a pair, but they don’t.

Hopkins is the man responsible for turning Totnes in Devon into a Transition Town and creating the Totnes Pound, a form of LET, for community trading and bartering. He is a dreamer and a thinker and he has lots of jolly good ideas for how Totnes will get by after peak oil, or powerdown as he likes to call it. I am sorry, but I can’t take it or him seriously. It all seems like a bit like back in the 80s when various towns declared themselves Nuclear-Free Zones. There’s lots of Imagineering and a fair bit of philosophical underpinning, but very little that is new or challenging. It’s Schumacher with a peak oil twist. And I don’t mean Michael Schumacher, either. Somehow, I don’t think Michael Schumacher would be impressed.

Basically, Hopkins is saying that in order to survive an oil-less future, we should all become hippies. We should live in co-housing, grow organic vegetables, build using cob and straw bale and screw each other’s wives and husbands. Actually, he didn’t suggest that last bit; I added it in because that is what hippies actually did, IIRC, together with taking large amounts of dope and getting into arguments about whose turn it was to cook tonight. You see, I sort of lived that future back in the 1970s and decided it really didn’t work quite as well as its advocates (and there were many) said it would. Down in Totnes, the 1970s never really went away and maybe, just maybe, they made it work for them. And in Stroud too. And maybe Hebden Bridge. But most of us live in places like Chelmsford or Tamworth, or in London suburbs like Streatham. And there the Good Life never caught on at all, and I don’t think it will when the oil runs out either. I’ve never been convinced by these anti-globalisation, localism arguments, and to my mind Hopkins is just serving up more of the same. On the other hand, global trade is a lot harder without cheap oil, but then so is everything else. Are we really going to go back to horse and carts?

Contrast it with Tim Pullen’s brief guidebook to building using sustainable materials. I don’t agree with every assertion in Pullen’s book either — I don’t think you’d suffocate if the mechanical ventilation system breaks down — but the meat of it is a simple exposition of how to use, and how to cost natural building materials and renewable energy systems. He’s particularly good on renewable energy, based on his experiences as a consultant in Wales where features like hydro power are more commonplace than in the flatlands of East Anglia where I live. There’s also a useful analysis of natural insulation materials: if you have trouble telling your Pavatex from your Homatherm, it’s all in here. Pullen doesn’t pull his punches and describes what he thinks works and, just as importantly, what doesn’t.

The paradoxical thing is that if you really want to prepare for an oil-free future, then Tim Pullen’s Simply Sustainable Homes is a really useful guide to have by your side. Not so Rob Hopkins’ Transition Handbook: it’s a green manifesto for sure, but it won’t get you powered up, fed or housed.

Why does Ecobuild have 467 speakers?

It’s the last week in February and Ecobuild is upon us once again. It runs for three days, starting tomorrow, at Earl’s Court in London. I feel I must attend because it’s right there in the middle of what I live and write about, but I went last year and came away feeling very depressed. Mostly because it was just so big and so consumerist, which all these shows tend to be, but which is ironic for a show called Ecobuild.

So this morning I started to try and work out which day would be best to go on. And to see if there was anything or anybody I really wanted to see. What stands out is that there is an amazing amount going on. So amazing that it’s actually overwhelming. The speaker list has no less than 467 names on it – given that the show runs for three days, that’s about 3 minutes each. They get around this by having ten or twelve theatres where speakers can strut their stuff. But that just adds to the overall confusion. How do you decide where to go or who to listen to? And how would you know afterwards if you’d seen or heard the ones you wanted to? Or merely just been witness to a random cross section of people babbling?

It’s a bit like the choices you get from Sky TV. About 200 channels and none of them are worth watching. Somehow this seems like part of the problem, not part of the solution. I can see that the organisers of Ecobuild are probably delighted to get so many speakers to turn out for them, but as a potential visitor I actually find it just too much to handle.

So I may go Tuesday, or Wednesday, probably not Thursday and very possibly not at all.