130 Bohemia Road, The Fish House, demolition and strip-out phase (photo: Ken Davis).

Energy…and our homes

Energy is defined as the power of doing work, but we tend to know it as something elusive and yet readily available if needed. Petrol for the car,  gas for heating, electricity for lights, washing machines, etc. All there when we need them, we simply – for the most part – just pay up, writes local architect, Ken Davis. Of course, some of us moan and complain about the cost of energy, but actually it is still remarkably cheap, so we – society – go on wasting it in huge amounts.

Bedzed Eco Homes (photographer unknown).

And one of the places we waste it most is in our houses. Firstly, because we have grown used to being warm and comfortable, whichever room we go into, and secondly, because our building stock was mainly built when low-cost energy was seen as an endless commodity. Even though energy costs have stalled slightly recently, the general trend on prices remains relentlessly upward and so will continue to rob us of our hard-earned income, which might well be spent on better things.

The other much unobserved factor about our very energy inefficient building stock is that our need to keep energy bills down now means that we reduce fresh air circulation in our houses – and good fresh air flow not only keeps us healthy, but also clears away damp air. These days we all produce huge amounts of moist air in our houses which, if not effectively cleared away, creates rot and mould, deteriorating both the buildings and the people in them. The health costs of poorly insulated housing are enormous.

Hockerton Eco Homes (photographer unknown).

Of course, we now know how to design and build low-energy houses and there are some excellent examples around, which I, as an architect, are well aware of and many people will have seen on various TV programmes, such as Hockerton Eco Homes and BedZED Eco Homes. But it is hard for many people to relate such unusual and expensive homes to the experience of most buildings in their neighbourhood. Of course, there are now also some good examples of thermally upgrading old buildings, but not enough – and certainly not enough that are accessible: enough to start to change hearts and minds of people who live in the ‘average’ house.

Another problem we face is the way our building industry still works in separate trades e.g. carpenter, bricklayer, and so on, and sub-contractors e.g. electrician, plumber, etc. The fundamental problem making existing houses more energy efficient is that you need to understand how the whole building works, in order to decide how to deconstruct and then reconstruct the building without completely demolishing and rebuilding it.

The answer then is not only to change our training regimes on building courses, so that we can have tradespeople who can tackle a wide range of building and services issues, but we also need to start energy-efficiently refurbishing local examples and making them accessible to local people. Hence the project I am now working on at 130 Bohemia Road, which was originally a fish shop with a flat over, but is now going to be a spacious two-bedroomed house with virtually zero energy bills. In my next article, I will describe the project in more detail and explain some of the decisions and progress I have made thus far.

130 Bohemia Road, The Fish House, underpinning (photo: Ken Davis).

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