Jeff Howell

Sustainable housing not so sustainable

The first building surveying case that we discussed was an award winning new Eco development where the equally new owners were feeling cold when the property should have been well insulated. When we opened up their new home we found that the insulation that should have been installed simply was not present in a building that had been passed by the builders, Building Control and NHBC. Jeff Howell commented that he was not at all surprised about this and said that over the years readers have written in about things like this and every other problem that you can imagine.

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It is hardly surprising when you consider that Jeff Howell has been writing for national newspapers for well over a decade. He commented that you can only feel sorry for anyone that deals with the British building industry as there really is no other industry quite like it.

Next we showed him a cavity wall insulation example where we had used a borescope and found next to no insulation at first floor level. Jeff Howell was not surprised to hear of this, advising that mineral fibre insulation within cavities has a limited life and it collapses under its own weight over time. We have only experienced it sagging to approximately a metre (visible via thermal imaging cameras that we use). Jeff Howell pondered the interesting point that potentially it will compress much further than this over time and that further monitoring will need to be carried out in this area.

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The third topic that we wanted to discuss was extreme condensation (as Sarah Beeny would say) in a house less than a year old where this led to us finding other things such as the damp proof course being level with the ground (it should be approximately two bricks above the ground). In addition the French drain was not draining away at all and the modern heating system which is an electrically run exhaust heat recovery system generating large bills (where fifteen minute running of the shower has the property full of condensation).

FRENCH DRAIN

Sustainable Housing?

It was interesting that Jeff Howell in our discussion about sustainable house building thought the industry has not thought this through properly. It also gave Jeff Howell a thought on his next potential new book, the sequel to The Rising Damp Myth – possibly The Sustainable House Myth?

Interestingly Jeff Howell comments that a Victorian house is far more sustainable than a modern property. He explained that the vast estates of terraced houses built in the nineteenth century used local materials, local labour, and had a very low energy input. They were expected to last for 50 years or so but, owing to the innate sustainability of the design – solid brick walls, slate roofs, lime mortar and plaster, sliding timber sash windows – many of them have lasted for almost 200 years and are still going strong. Whereas some homes built in the 1960s and ‘70s are already being demolished, because they are of such poor quality that it is not cost-effective to spend money refurbishing them.

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Independent building surveyors

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