[urlhttp://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/[/url

This article in The Observer [urlhttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/01/cutting-energy-bills-oldham-passivhaus[/url sort of explains everything, two houses in Oldham, one of the type that almost everyone will live in with energy costs of £500 per quarter and another with heating costs of £20 per year - because its been built that way, its a "passivhaus" and controls air flow within the building using the heat generated by its residents to warm up incoming fresh air with the result that you don't need extra energy to maintain the temperature.

It would be nice to retrofit every house with the technology that makes a new-build a passivhaus but in simple terms you need the heat exchanger, air ducting, a tightly sealed house, and then the will to make it work, no point in going to all that trouble and expense and then leaving the back door or a window open any longer than absolutely necessary on any day when the outside temperature is lower than your desired internal temperature (most days of the year then), and there is little to be gained if like our house you have a female (or several) who seem to be continually cold and require the house temperature to be something akin to the tropical house of a zoo.

Being guilty of working in the building industry in the 1970s I of course know all there is to know about how NOT to build a house which is adequately prepared for a British inclement day whether it be a howling winter snowstorm of even just a dull chilled summers day, if you were lucky you might have got one inch of glass fibre in your loft in those 1970s council houses, more likely none at all and in a strange twist of fate those that now live in what were experimental council houses in South Tyneside and who have internal walls made of compressed straw (yes, true), are probably quite snug now, purely by accident of course.

Food for thought but other than retrofit cavity insulation (a topic which architects still quibble over), topping up your loft insulation and spending money on a condensing boiler there doesn't seem to be much advice around on how to heat your home on a low budget and keep that budget low in a "normal" house, certainly nothing like the sort of advice that the Passivhaus people seem to want to sell to you (theres a lack of advice on their web site other than to buy their books).

Like lobbying for the "Green Tax" element to be lifted from fuel bills could the energy companies be quite happy to keep the houses of the UK cold and draughty ?

Sorry, but there is LOTS of information about heating and insulating your home, in fact there are quite significant funds available for insulation and the like.

The problem is, you have to go and get it, it doesn't come and get you (sorry about that, but it's called personal responsibility)

Actually it does come and get you, I get fekkin pestered on the phone almost every week by scavenging "grant" companies eager to grab a commission for "sending around a surveyor", they focus on cavity wall insulation (got), loft insulation under 4" (got more), double glazing to "new" standards (no problem with the double glazing I have) and replacement efficient central heating boilers (got one last year), in fact the onyl good thing to come out of my wifes period of unemployment a few years back is that we got the cavity wall and loft insulation done for free.

But that isn't what the topic is about.

Very nice. Now how do you afford it?
The government ended the CERT scheme late last year. Now only people in receipt of certain benefits can get free insulation. One would also ask how much information is available to people who don't have internet access.
If you can afford it the Green Deal scheme will pay for half the insulation costs, how many people have £250 easily available? Plus you have to pay around £100 for an initial assessment to even see if you qualify for the scheme, something which, no doubt, would put people off from applying.
Also if you're a tenant, in Council housing or a Housing Association you're not eligible.

To suggest its easy and is simply a lack of "personal responsibility" is a typical, arrogant, patronising, right-wing response to a problem.

Miller Insulation were the chosen contractor at the time we had the cavity wall done, I've always had the suspicion that had we not had ours done for free and I had called their local office for a quote, it would have been cheaper than involving the fee earner who then introduced Millers in the first place, subsidy or no subsidy.

There may be advice out there but in my extensive trawls to find out whether my home [iis even suitable[/i for cavity wall insulation only leaves me with two opinions so far.

Opinion 1. You need cavity wall insulation, it's absolutely fine and we will come out and have a look, it'll cost you.
Opinion 2. Ooh no, your house is way too old and putting cavity wall insulation into such a house will actually make it damp as the cavities are an air-gap that keeps it dry.

I want to believe Opinion 1 and would be willing to pay for it to be done but Opinion 2 puts me off, I don't want to spend a small fortune on something that is going to ruin the place.

As the topic has arisen, I wonder if anyone can offer another opinion?

Built 1898, the house has cavity throughout between a stone outer wall and brick inner wall, has no "modern" wall ties but the walls are tied by some of the stones from the outer wall protruding-back-and-mortared-into the brick inner wall.
I have already insulated the attic (there is no loft) by putting Kingspan between the rafters and by insulating the dwarf walls and gable-ends with a similar product to Kingspan but with a plasterboard facing, attached by dab-and-stick.
It's well toasty up there and no sign of damp.
The house is also now part-double-glazed.

You've got another problem too, your house will probably have open fireplaces and chimneys and if they are "live" then you've got a natural warm air extractor in each room, AND you'll need to have some method of replacing that air to keep the process flowing unless you want to suffocate yourself - back in the day houses like yours leaked air in through doors and windows without the need for air vents but sealing them up with upvc replacements tends to spoil that, its also an important point with internal central heating boilers that there is a legal requirement for specific sized air vents into the room in which they stand, which in my experience (when we had one) tend to change at every maintenance visit.

The issue of damp and cavity wall insulation even in to newer houses is one that I have heard from many architects.

Ah, but it's your personal responsibility to know which one is correct.

I now check once a week to see whether any new gas regulations have been introduced so that I comply, it means hacking the confidential engineers page on the British Gas web site but its worth breaking the law to make sure I stay within the law and don't inadvertently carbon monoxide myself.

The idea of the passivhaus type of build or just building new houses with solar panels and ground sourced heat pumps and under floor heating seems a no briner to me. As is makingit easy for people in older houses to adapt them where possible to use such technologies.

The thing that caught my eye in that Guardian article was the positive effects of removing people from fuel poverty has on their health which in turn saves the NHS money.

[iOne mile away in Fitton Hill, Oldham council, a large housing group and Oldham NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) are investing £200,000 between them to retro-fit 1,000 cold homes with new boilers and exterior insulation. The health service calculates it will save £300,000 a year in reduced hospital admissions and social costs, and the council hopes each household will save around £450 a year. Each home also draws on energy company green levy money.

"Oldham is a cold town. It has got poorer health than most of the country. There's not much money about. Around one in five, or 20,000 homes here, are in fuel poverty," says Alan Higgins, director of Oldham council public health.

"We think each person lifted out of fuel poverty will save the health service about £250 a year. Data suggests there are 20% more deaths in Oldham in winter than in summer because of extra respiratory illnesses and heart problems [linked to cold homes. If you get a cold winter and people cannot heat their homes, you get more people turning up in A&E and suffering."[/i

This is why it ought not to be simply a matter of personal responsibility to arrange to have this kind of thing done to your house (and many can't because they don't own the house anyway). A bit of planning, large scale deployment of such schemes to benefit from economies of scale could really end up saving us a lot of money as well as improving the health of many people.

The trouble is this kind of joined up thinking seems alien to governments particularly those who think market forces rule everything.

I do, though, think you've touched on an entirely relevant point.

In essence, when everybody is out to sell you something, how do you know who to trust?

Is it 'personal responsibility' to have to know, say, everything there is to know about plumping so that you don't make a bad or misinformed decision about a boiler or a car, for instance? Or as this thread has illustrated, insulation and architecture if you're buying/renting a house or want to carry out some form of home improvement? Hove we now deskilled so much that we can expect every customer to know as much about the subject as the salesman/engineer/mechanic etc?

We've mentioned it before, but there used to be pride/responsibility in customer service too, but in many cases, it no longer exists and the only motivation is the sale.

I had (another) incident recently, where my phone provider – formerly Orange and very good, but now EE and nowhere near as good – has managed to cock up twice on the same thing. They convinced me – yes, I heard the pitch, looked at the evidence and decided to give it a whirl – to try one of those myfi gadgets, which has the potential to save me some money.

On two occasions they have messed up the delivery. The attitude from a driver, ringing me from my home address to find out where I am – after I told them to deliver it to me at the office – is one of surly annoyance and 'well, you'll have to contact them'. That, of course, after the whole farce of only giving you a 'slot' for delivery with less than 24 hours notice.

The first time, I heard nothing from them (this was in the spring). The latest episode is ongoing, because having failed to deliver me this gadget – and thus having no signature for it – they've started billing me monthly as they they have.

I'd love to find another provider, but according to [iWhich?[/i (personal responsibility taken in checking things out, note) all of them are pretty much as bad as each other.

So where is their 'responsibility'? Because now it seems that I have to spend my time chasing them to refund me monies taken that should not have been, because they're seem incapable of organising the proverbial in the proverbial.

To bring it back to building. The block I'm in is 18 years old. We discovered – via a burglary – that the housing association/builders put in windows that they should not have: they're too easy to prise open, as we found.

We pay building insurance to the housing association, but do you think we could get any help on repairs for that or the grilles that we decided to add?

Many of the flats have warped windows. Our back patio door/windows has one broken pane (another attempted burglary and the door has had to be repaired (at our cost) for the same reason. It's now far from capable of keeping the cold out. So, is it our responsibility to replace it – or not? What do we pay building insurance for?

The housing association says it needs to repaint the windows every few years. We (as a group of residents) have said why not simply replace the windows etc with polyurethane, then they'll won't need painting every few years and it will also solve the problem of several windows being warped and causing people to have damp problems etc.

The housing association says it cannot do that because it has to have agreement of all residents and it doesn't have the contact details for one of the flats where the owner rents it out.

Responsibility is wonderful. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work both ways.

True.
We have five working fireplaces, two of which (both in bedrooms) are cast iron jobs and have a pivoting flap to stop draughts coming down the chimney in windy weather.
In general, though, any draughts are not particularly noticeable.


True again, but the double glazing is double-glazed units in the original and refurb'ed sashes and, although they are now draught-proofed, it's not as hermetic as uPVC and a bit of air must get in.
Visually, you can hardly tell it's double glazed.


Bugger.

I have a similar type of property to yours, although about 30 years more modern. When our local council provided free insulation to all residents we were told (after the boroscope survey) our property was unsuitable for cavity wall insulation as, being rough stone outer wall (and having the stone "ties" as another obstruction) there was not a consistent cavity thickness for the insulation to flow and get an even cavity fill, which would lead to cold spots and possibly damp.

I have a similar type of property to yours, although about 30 years more modern. When our local council provided free insulation to all residents we were told our property was unsuitable for cavity wall insulation as, being rough stone outer wall (and having the stone "ties" as another obstruction) there was not a consistent cavity thickness for the insulation to flow and get an even cavity fill, which would lead to cold spots and possibly damp.