New Home Owners And Snagging Forum
Advice on buying a brand new home => General discussion => Topic started by: robgrieve on January 26, 2018, 03:10:02 pm
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Hi everyone,
Firstly, I've had a look around and could not find a dedicated sustainability section, if I've missed it admins please correct me. I also feel like we are moving in this direction and therefore maybe there should be one for people to discuss all aspects of sustainability when it comes to your home or new homes.
I am fourth year university student doing a dissertation on sustainable homes, mainly the technology within them (heating systems, electric etc). I would really appreciate it if any of you have thoughts, opinions or experience on this topic and would be willing to complete my questionnaire for my primary research. It is available here http://sustainability.robgrieve.com (http://sustainability.robgrieve.com).
If you would like to discuss anything please reply below, I am more than happy to have a discussion about sustainable homes in general or anything in the topic.
Many thanks
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Sustainability is a good topic, however it annoys me quite a bit that in the construction industry today we have people designing new home technology, but they have never once worked on a building site. I am not trying to run you down Rob, but have you ever worked on a building site? Have you demolished an old house and seen which materials have lasted the test of time? Have you seen which designs work and which designs don't work? Do you understand the banking system that has pushed up land prices so high that they now account for two thirds of the cost of a home? Have you ever lived in a house in the countryside that has no mains water, electricity,gas or telecommunications? I have knowledge of all of the above and more.
Traditional brick built houses are the most sustainable, they last for hundreds of years. Large gardens allow people to grow their own food therefore reducing carbon footprint considerably.
Today's idea of sustainable housing seems to involve building wooden prefab rabbit hutches with a solar panel on the roof and an AI computer that tells you when you need to buy a pint of milk. It is total non sense.
Still this is what happens when people with no construction experience try to design homes.
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Hi,
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
I have in fact yes. I'm a quantity surveyor in central London working residential projects of all sizes into the tens of millions, some of which are extremely complex due to the age of the city and so much unknown information in the ground as well all the number of authorities that influence your site from the royal family, the crown estate, the city and local councils all of which I have had to work with.
Traditional brick is sustainable yes as it lasts the length on time. The material choice of a buildings envelope doesn't really matter. Timber is a great choice, its sustainable when managed correctly. The importance of the envelope is that it meets key criteria such as being air tight and having little thermal leakage. This helps everyone's bills reduce and helps the planet at the same time.
There are two great developments happening at the moment Sustainability is starting to get noticed but progress is so slow, we just want to speed it up a bit.
As for large gardens, that would be amazing. But have you seen densely populated urban areas, good luck getting a garden. These are the most polluting areas and ones we need to work on, the countryside is not really the big problem here.
AI for milk, now your going OTT. If you remove the gimmicks AI can be extremely powerful in helping us to be more sustainable. Say turning lights off when no one is there to save energy. The first thing you do when you return home after a period away, turn the heating up from 0 to 20. That uses so much energy, instead you could slowly heat your home over the course of a day or two before you arrive back using less energy and less money. There are some amazing things that AI and smart tech could/can do but people get stuck up on the gimmicks like having a chat to Alexa about life or as you put it buying milk.
If you would like to voice your opinions in my research please do.
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I am sorry Rob, I am unconvinced by timber frame rabbit hutches. They are a fire risk and cannot cope with UK weather. It is possible to build a brick house with exactly the same thermal values as a timber house. There is a big push in the UK to build prefab timber housing and it will be a disaster, this is the 1960s all over again. Timber houses are cheap to build allowing greater speculation of land prices and bigger profits for greedy corporates that own the prefab factories. It is no coincidence that the construction leadership council is made up of corporates who have invested in and profit from prefabs. This is the same organisation that has put NVQ requirements on CSCS cards, creating a labour shortage and driving up costs of traditional build. Qualifications do not improve standards, inspection of work improves standards.
I repeat again todays so called sustainable housing is nonsense, it is just a cheap way of building poor quality housing for maximum profit .
Good luck with your degree , it is a pity that todays house designers hold such contempt for traditional build, small companies and skilled workers.
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Today's so-called sustainable housing is nonsense, it is just a cheap way of building poor quality housing for maximum profit .
..... it is a pity that today's house designers hold such contempt for traditional build, small companies and skilled workers.
I totally agree. All the sustainability badge does is create unnecessary jobs so these people can have unnecessary meetings to push for ill-thought out change, that will never work in the real world and will never be put into practice except for the few over spending and building their own supposed eco-friendly sustainable homes.
All these people driving diesel cars on congested motorways, printing minutes of their pointless meetings, heating in their unnecessary offices etc Then they spend their wages flying to a city for the weekend or buying a new DFS sofa every couple of years!
Even worse, they join my forum and post links even though it is not permitted!