I realise many of us are concerned about privacy and interaction with big government etc so please feel free to ignore.

A petition has been posted on petition.parliament.uk:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/190137

The PassivHaus standard delivers buildings that are healthy, comfortable, and cheap to heat, with heating bills and resulting carbon emissions less than 10% of the average UK building stock. Fuel poverty and climate change can be delivered through high levels of internal comfort.

More details
Despite the obvious benefits of the standard, the construction industry often requires more stick than carrot, with full take-up of the standard only happening in places where legislation has been brought about, such as Brussels, Frankfurt and Dún Laoghaire.

While the Building Regs are based on the minimum acceptable standard the building industry will deliver buildings of low performance, with high energy wastage, poor comfort conditions and contradicting design and living practices.

I've signed it but I don't hold out much hope that enough people will sign it. Most people don't know what the PH standard is and probably many don't care. Sorry to be negative.

I have signed because, without the CfSH (which maybe didn't have everything going for it anyway) there's b----r all else to make people do decent buildings. On the other hand, can you imagine the 'PH' built by some of the builders referred to, in a less than complimentary manner, on here?

No gravelld, I did not mean that I thought the *intention* was 'uncertified PH', I just mean that given the 'standard offered by some builders (including volume new-builders) can you imagine the attempts?! There'd be lots of jobs for 'PH trouble-shooters'.

Nick

Have any of these petitions actually changed anything?

Posted By: SteamyTeaHave any of these petitions actually changed anything?

Consciousness-raising, drip-feed, zeitgeist - I'm signing for such reasons, 100% confident that it won't get enacted in exactly that form.

It is badly written.

Posted By: gravelldwith heating bills and resulting carbon emissions less than 10% of the average UK building stock. Fuel poverty and climate change can be delivered through high levels of internal comfort.

(how can carbon emissions be "less than 10% of the UK building stock" ?)

(whoever would be interested in "delivering fuel poverty" for GN sake ?)

try again

gg

The petition is nothing to do with me btw and of course I expect it to not even reach 10k signatures, it's been languishing at the current level for a good while.

I'm with Tom, nothing's perfect, this is much more perfect than what we have.

Any system that locks a builder into being screwed by a small group of people with a license

You're probably right, but only because of the order of those operands.

Funny how it's ok to screw home owners by a small group of housebuilders.

Funny how it's ok to screw car drivers by a small group of car manufacturers and light touch regulation.

Funny how it's ok to screw the public at large by a small group of organisations (you try getting one!) with a banking licence.

The only way forward for regulation is to make it independent and rigorous.

Posted By: djh(unless you happen to live somewhere enlightened like Cambridgeshire)

Whats enlightened in Cambridgeshire - have I missed something special in my county?

Posted By: djhOne of the things that irks me is that the PHI hasn't bothered securing any passivhaus trademarks, which means cowboys on here and more seriously elsewhere are free to make use of the terms without fear of any comeback, so I've no idea what branding is being talked about.

If someone uses the term PassivHaus that is clearly a brand. Not just the camel casing, it's even more obvious in the UK being a non native term. To me, if a brand is used that means the explicit goals of the organisation owning the brand are being used, and that means certification.

If someone uses the term "passive house", like you, I have no real idea what they are talking about and I agree that would be too wholly.

But what do you mean by "so far outside the ball park" - do you mean so far away from what we have now?




I think sometimes guys/gals, in cases like these, we need to be a bit more political and a bit less purist. Yes we can all find reasons not to sign because any smart person can rationalise pretty much anything but you also have to pick your battles. One way is to rally around recognisable brands and PassivHaus may be one such totem. If we don't, we just end up like the Judean People's Front.

Posted By: djhEd, I'm curious in what ways you find it too specific and biased? It's certainly taken a long while to catch up with PV, for one example.

Yes, that's what I was thinking of: arbitrarily counting photons which hit windows but not ones which hit PV (or solar thermal) panels. Has it caught up?

Posted By: gravelldI think sometimes guys/gals, in cases like these,we need to be a bit more political and a bit less purist. … If we don't, we just end up like the Judean People's Front.

Agreed - I was worrying about the JPF when I wrote that comment above. However, maybe the answer is to take a moment to think about what's really wanted (i.e., what many more people can get behind) rather than jumping in too quickly with something over specific.

Also, something which can realistically happen. Perhaps better airtightness standards or acceptance of PHPP as an alternative to SAP (isn't it already accepted some places?).

Posted By: Ed Davies[...] However, maybe the answer is to take a moment to think about what's really wanted (i.e., what many more people can get behind) rather than jumping in too quickly with something over specific.

Personally I take a different view. "Thinking" and discussing just leads to too many camels imo. It's what we have now. "Stakeholder" meetings. Views from the energy industry. Views from house building corporations, which are really just proxies for pension funds anyway. "Thinking" (it's not really thinking, thought is cheap in reality) just becomes the excuse for inaction and the precursor to muddled half-way-houses and unintended consequences.

Better to JFDI, measure and improve iteratively.

Posted By: barney
I suspect the correct way is light touch and relevant in matters like building energy performance regulation

CfSH and PHI all have very particular quirks and foibles - we have Building regs to address this - make them more rigorous by all means (and a bit of basic enforcement would help) - lets not make things more complicated than we have to - particularly as we don't build that many new houses - we are focussing on the wrong things in my opinion

There is no correct way. It depends what you want to optimise for.

Broadly speaking I think the target should be kWh/m2 and should work in conjunction with evidence based policy on competing concerns, e.g. ventilation. The types of numbers should be around the Ph level. The important thing is then enforcement.

The reason is I want to optimise for a well built building stock which we don't have to fix later, because fixing already built stuff costs much much more than building correctly in the first place. This derives productivity benefits for the economy, lower costs for healthcare, and so on. That's what I want to optimise for. These are economically productive ideas, not rentier economics like a commoditised volume house builder churning out crap to support 55 year old newly retirees keep their golf club membership.

I don't see how this can be that "light touch". Maybe in terms of the science and the engineering - low energy buildings are not *that* complicated in this sense (as ST mentioned above). But I think it will require more work on the implementation and measurement side. Self regulation doesn't work, as evidenced in other markets, including house building.

Expecting energy costs to drive energy-saving measures won't work. The way the world's biz model is set up, whereby very many costs (like environmental degradation, ruined community in far-off places) aren't rolled into the selling price, almost everything is getting apparently cheaper incl energy in all its forms, approaching zero-cost as hyper-productivity reveals its exponential effect.

But despite, or perhaps because of that, there is a counter-effect, that's still in infancy.
In crudest form, it would be a demand that all those presently-externalised planetary costs be brought onto the balance sheet, which would create a very different cost/incentive structure.
In fuller form, it would look not at whether individual corporations or disruptive startups fail or survive, thrive or doiminate, but whether life (esp my grandchildren) will thrive on this planet, or die, on a timescale up to 2100.

Until then, all we can do is consciousness-raising, adversarial campaigning incl support for almost any flaky petition that goes in the right direction, create realities on-the-ground, pressure on govt and officialdom to legislate/regulate (again however flaky/compromised that is). Create a band-wagon.

Not lose sight of the deepest goal, as per middle para above.

Posted By: gravelldBroadly speaking I think the target should be kWh/m2 and should work in conjunction with evidence based policy on competing concerns, e.g. ventilation. The types of numbers should be around the Ph level. The important thing is then enforcement.

Surely it would be better to base it on kWh/occupant - that way if you want to build a bigger home, you have to make it consumately better insulated..

Posted By: barneyIn simple terms a move to adopting passive house standards based on a petition instigated by a passive house architect isn't what is required

+1

On reflection, and trying (hard) to be positive nonetheless, I suspect that the entire thing is actually an attempted advertising gimmick.

gg