Gecco's Blog

On a visit to the ever-expanding Ecobuild Fair yesterday, I was interested to sit in on a discussion surrounding the Great British Refurb Campaign, set up over a year ago by Kevin McCloud. The campaign is trying to make our Government and the great British public understand the fact that whilst new builds are being regulated and driven towards zero carbon by 2016, little is being done for the 26m homes already built and occupied by the likes of you and I. How can we set about retrofitting so many homes to reach carbon reduction targets set for 2020 and beyond?

A recent competition was set up by the campaign for one lucky winner to receive all the upgrades needed to create a low energy home. The winner Will Homoky was present at the conference and described the upgrades (valued at around £23,000) that his house had received:

* Interior wall & loft insulation

* Solar Panels

* Balloons in unused chimneys to stop draughts

* New composite doors and thermally insulated glazing

* Smaller Radiators

* Unit to lower voltage coming in through the electricity mains

How had this changed Will’s energy statistics? The results were astounding, as he achieved an 80% drop in carbon emissions and better still a 123% drop in energy bills – Will can now make money on electricity produced by his solar panels through the new Feed-in-Tariff coming in April.

A fantastic result I am sure you’ll agree, but how can the majority of the public carry out similar works? There are many hurdles to overcome

-          Financial : many householders simply cannot afford it

-          Destruction : the complete house might be affected and occupiers will need to put up with a lot of disruption during the works

-          Motivation : many people lack the belief that they need to reduce their personal carbon footprint

-          Industry infrastructure : currently we are as a nation lacking in the skills and infrastructure necessary to carry out the works on a large scale

Clearly, these are big issues that need discussion at the highest levels of our society.

Government is moving in the right direction with schemes such as CERT and CESP both of which help financially with grants for upgrades but can only cover around 1.5m houses per year. If we are to tackle 26m houses much more is needed.

Yesterday Ed Milliband introduced a new scheme in which homeowners can take out a ‘green loan’ for energy efficient upgrades. This loan will be set against the property and will be sold on to the next occupier as the house is sold.  This is once again a step in the right direction but will not help out the millions living in social housing or close to the poverty line who do not own their own houses. Can landlords and housing associations finance the necessary upgrades?

There is clearly no easy answer and we will be following the debate with interest in the run-up to the election. Check out the Great British Refurb Campaign website who will be posting summaries of the three main political parties housing policies over the coming months. It is sure to be an interesting debate.

Most importantly of all, sign up to the campaign and make it clear that if we are to achieve the targets set for carbon reduction we are all going to need a little help and we are definitely going to need to work together.

As an eco interior designer, I am thrilled by the in-roads being made by the building industry with stronger and stronger building codes, moving all of us closer to a zero carbon housing stock. The benefits of optimum insulation and low energy heating options are clear and if adopted globally could help to save us from ourselves. The innovations are exciting and just keep coming – I can’t wait for next week’s Ecobuild to check out what has happened in the last 12 months.

As an eco interior designer, I am worried about the in-roads being made in the building industry towards air-tight housing that provides this optimum insulation and minimal heat loss. Has anybody considered the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in this new building style? By now, we are more or less aware of the chemical cocktail building up within our homes. Many of us are aware of the term ‘off-gassing’, the process by which chemical compounds and VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) evaporate from items in our houses such as paint, wood stain, varnishes, plywood, carpets treated with pesticide and stain repellent, upholstery treated with FR treatments such as bromide and MDF containing formaldehyde. The list goes on and the cocktail remains untested.

Many of the chemicals in everyday building materials and furniture have been tested alone but every home has a different mixture and the cumulative effects of those have never been tested.  However, the symptoms of the off-gassing have been recorded by experts as “puffy red eyes, watery eyes, runny nose, congestion, coughing, full blown asthma, skin irritation, rashes, itching and hives” (Dr Clifford Basset, Vice Chairman of Public Education Committee of American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology). Brominated FR treatments and some carpet pesitcides and stain repellents have been proven to be persistent and cumulative; many are hormone disrupters and some even carcinogenic.

A recent experiment and now best-selling book ‘Slow Death by Rubber Duck’ written by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, looks at the effect living in a normal home with everyday products can have on toxic levels in our bloodstream. The results are more than a little worrying.

In our enthusiasm and drive to move closer to energy efficient and air tight housing, let us not forget that we also need to remove the chemical threat from our living environment. It is time to move over or rather move back to natural building materials and to look at how we decorate our homes. It is a personal challenge that any private individual can undertake. The solutions are out there but until regulations are in place will large developers really change the products they put into their housing estates or flats?