Posted By: tony
I think a lot of relatively new homes need to be included in the category, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and some later homes especially the dry lined ones.

It is not so much the old cold homes that is the problem but the huge amount of energy that is used to keep them warm.

Fabric improvements is what is needed on a massive scale, including draught proofing, air tightness, floor insulation and more....

Absolutely!

We've still got plenty of work to do, but our partially deep-retrofitted ~1970 cavity wall construction bungalow is both more comfortable and cheaper to run than when we started even energy prices have increased along the way.

Doing the work has included some real 'plasterboard tent' moments. One corner room had always seemed curiously draughty - which made sense when we stripped off the plasterboard and discovered a 100mm hole in the inner blockwork at floor level on the gable end wall 1] and an entire inner skin block missing on the front wall.

What's really amazing about those sort of faults is that this was a self-build, so harder to blame a disinterested, (not)fit & forget builder...

[1] My guess is that someone dropped something in the cavity, made the hole to retrieve it, but didn't repair the hole.

http://www.lowenergybuildings.org.uk/
still a useful resource

Yes, about Energiesprong - being energetically promoted at grassroots here in SW by https://www.regen.co.uk/project/zero-energy-buildings-catalyst , along with other retrofit etc educations.

The capital intensive bit is a worry - just like PPI school-building, the longterm liability to maintain what was built will get flogged off to gold digging companies who will legalistically exploit every loophole in the original contract - stories of £2700 to change a lightbulb.

Note that Energiesprong is *not* the idea of dropping complete prefabb'd facades onto existing houses - that's just the technological solution that has so far been almost universally proposed by tenderers in Netherlands. Projects here in UK look like being tendered to satisfy the Perfomance Specification (which is what Energiesprong in fact is) by a variety of approaches.

Great to have an insider story barney. Didn't know I'd been 'blaming PFI cos' that much!

I agree the fault or 'blame' is mainly on the govts that went that route, interested more in 'results to show now' than longterm considerations. Esp when, as you say, there was a perfectly good, though then as now ideologically demonised Keynesian alternative route, which govts of both shades did in fact take when it came to bailing out their chums the banks.

I can also point to the legalistic possibilities for future fat profiteering, that tenderers' lawyers (much cleverer than govt's) saw and kept quiet about. Or if not the original tenderers', then the lawyers of the offshores that bought the risk. The longterm result is def not good value for the nation, even if £2500 lightbulbs really are apocryphal. In numerous ways, we hear that for example school meal menus are locked in contractually to 1999 rubbish standards, and even Jamie Oliver can't afford the penalties for improving that, for the next 40yrs or whatever. So the inheritor companies do also deserve blame for cynically milking asymetric legal arrangements, to everyone else's disadvantage forever. It's not good enough to say 'we just excercise the entitlement that was irresponsible weakly handed to us originally'.

We should make sure that Energiesprong doesn't go the same miserable route.

There's a document at http://transition-zero.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Performance-Requirements.pdf which I find a bit worrying. It doesn't even seem to to be able to do consistent arithmetic within itself, let alone in the real world.

I notice they don't mention EnerPHit, which would seem a more natural comparison against Energiesprong. Perhaps it would be too difficult to obscure the reality of a solution in search of a problem?

barney I read and re-read your post above and regret I can't understand what you mean! You're making illustrations intended to illuminate but I can't see what bit of the system, or who, they're refering to.

About the first para, if I find I'm being 'treated (as fair game) with the practices of the bazaar' I've learned to walk away asap, even at loss of fees due etc - is repugnant, contemptible and won't leave me satisfied (or rich) even if I wanted to. I know, as a 'professional' I'm in a priviledged position to be able to do that and insist on acting only as 'trusted professional advisor' - the rest of the world has to grit teeth and make a buck. But it needn't be like that and the public is right to be outraged at its conseqences.

Posted By: djhPerhaps it would be too difficult to obscure the reality of a solution in search of a problem?

What do you mean by that Dave?

The point of Energiesprong is to provide tools
1) to create an energy upgrade market that's economic at a greatly improved performance level - it's specifically not
2) to promote any particular technical solution, nor
3) to invent any standard - though for time being adopts European NZEB as basis for its Performance Specifications which are part of its approach to 1) above. It doesn't provide tools to assess compliance but places the onus longterm on the tenderers.

By contrast for instance PH does not include tools
1) to transform the energy upgrade market, nor is it
2) to promote any particular technical solution - it's specifically
3) to research and invent a standard and provide tools to assess compliance.

So both agree on 2), and each covers the ground that the other does not, amongst 1) and 3).

Not everyone realises that, about Energiesprong. It covers completely different grounds to PH, so shouldn't be compared to it.

http://transition-zero.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Performance-Requirements.pdf isn't I think a piece of commercial rivalry, but is simply defining the relative performance level that Energiesprong thinks it can make economic. I think they're prob right, and PH is an unecessary step too far, given the forthcoming growth of very cheap capex/zero marginal cost local solar.

Energiesprong sees itself as a source of advice and information, to support and enable clients to navigate legalities, create watertight contracts, and write effective Performance Specifications - and to similarly support the tenderers too (we should perhaps worry about split loyalties).

So Energiesprong's staff should be strong on contracts and techniques of specification writing, not particularly on building design or engineering.

But the other thing we should worry about, is that the tenderers' long-term performance liability will be bought off to legally-smart offshores whose main aim will be to wriggle out of liabilities - like US health insurance and UK PFI, like I think barney was illustrating above.

I don't understand how Energiesprong can possibly fight the reality that retrofit is not economically viable on a direct basis (i.e. capital cost of works versus savings in energy expenditure). And yet it seems to claim this is the case.

To do so it would probably have to reduce the cost of deep retrofit to 10-15% of what it costs currently. That's how big the gap is, and that's why I don't understand how they can possibly claim what they claim.

(Note I personally think there are many indirect economic benefits of retrofit - it's just they are very rarely priced in).

Can you point out where I'm wrong Tom?

I still think the only real solution is as a centrally funded national infrastructure project. I guess there's also a chance if you have an ultra-low interest rate loan for it - below inflation, and guaranteed to remain that way.