airavata
Ste CookThinking back to the summer heatwave in the UK when everyone was “Our houses aren’t built for the heat, they’re designed to keep warm in winter”, and now everyone is “Our houses aren’t built for this cold”. Maybe time to admit that the UK has just been building homes for 100 years that are shit at *everything* aside from extracting rent from the poor.
Dr Alex Bond@Polypompholyx A mood
tautology@Polypompholyx living in a mid-Victorian house; it's been a lot longer than 100 years. We've spent a lot of money on modernisation and even in my well-insulated office room, I'm still having to use the "old man blanket" in those cold hours before the heating comes on.
Jo Lambert@tautology @Polypompholyx our house is at least 250 years old. It's bloody freezing. Was designed to be heated by fires in every room, which we can't afford the fuel for. Totally agree modern houses could and should be better but let's be accurate about older houses.
@tautology @JoDavies I do the blanket thing too 👍
Christine Munro 🧀@Polypompholyx At least they're better than the back-to-backs that were outlawed I think by the Victorians. "UK housing: not as shit as it could be!" etc.
The glazing is terrible though. Ours has been fitted rather piecemeal with double-glazing over the decades which is actually worse than the single-glazing it replaced. Astonishing.
PedroV@Polypompholyx or maybe nothing is perfect and people are shit at rationalising compromises?
Big 'ol bimbo@Polypompholyx untrue, they kill the poor too!
GregryC@Polypompholyx lot longer than 100 years, mind.
Martin Gleadow@Polypompholyx "Our houses are built to cope with incessant dismal grey dreariness"
Maybe it's why so many people have been painting their houses grey.
@mgleadow “Millennial magnolia”, thank you 😂
Laura Kishimoto 🍁:eve:@Polypompholyx Insulation works both ways! Signed, a Canadian
Coding Cottagecore Bogwitch@forestpines Ha! Yes: this.
Final Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸@Polypompholyx Developers discovered there was more money in building 4 bedroom executive houses in cul-de-sacs of unadopted roads. And then extracting a leasehold land rent on top of that. So they get to pay top rate council tax for services the council won't do and passes off to the freehold owner who charges them again.
Mx Autumn 
@Polypompholyx I live in a new build and can say it’s certainly built for the cold, but the 100 year old house I grew up in absolutely wasn’t and most the houses in the UK fall into the wasn’t camp.
Wolfgang FeistYou can look at it in this way - or you go and develop a chance to change both: Make houses suitable for summer AND for winter.
Retrofits are also possible...
In the UK:
@PassivhausTrust
@WolfgangFeist We’ve done what we can with solar, attic insulation, fixing blown double glazing, but anything more would be (even more) expensive unfortunately.
Annie Radetzky@Polypompholyx They should be fine in winter but check your EPC. If it's a rent it needs to be better than E. If you're owner-occupied, get it up to D or C if you can. Obvs you'll always need some heating on when it's really cold.
Public Universal Foe@Polypompholyx I mean there's also that climate change thing, so Summers are hotter and Winters are colder than they used to be. But yeah nobody with money or power has done anything to make sure the rest of us have decent housing. Rather, they decided to price gouge heating instead, to kill us off for profit
Phil Thane ✅@Polypompholyx The thing about insulation is it works both ways. #insulatebritain have a point.
cyplo@Polypompholyx exactly! Building for winter is same as for summer, good insulation does wonders
BarryP@Polypompholyx Son & partner are renting a new-build flat in Liverpool. Was warm enough without heating, when we stayed there in late November, but when it got really cold, the panel (not storage) heaters it has, were not up to the job, without costing a fortune.
msgbi
🦇 Jennie Rigg 🏳️🌈 (she/her)@Polypompholyx yeah, I'm glad you put for 100 years. My 160 year old victorian stone terrace was built for not particularly well off people, and it has nice sized rooms and stays cool in summer and we have a proper fire in the winter.
Honestly, the victorians were awful at a LOT of things, especially to do with human rights and exploitation, but one thing they were good at was over-engineering. Bring back the principle of building things to last.
Albert Cardona@Polypompholyx A severe issue of lack of insulation affects UK houses like nowhere to else I’ve ever seen https://albert.rierol.net/tell/20221008_insulation.html
Christian Wilms@albertcardona @Polypompholyx Having lived in the US (-20°C in winter, 40°C in summer) , UK (-5° to 30°) and Germany (-15° to 35°), it never ceases to amaze me that the country with the smallest temperature range over the year struggles the most to accommodate even that small range.
Becky T@ChrisWilms23 @albertcardona @Polypompholyx I've mentioned this before on the bird site, but UK housing stock was designed overwhelmingly for a country with a moderate climate, and cheap coal made heating affordable. Even 1970s houses are terrible. Add a purely capitalist ethic to design and build and you get insubstantial cardboard walls, miserly floorplans that necessitate open planned spaces, and a huge stock that is expensive to retrofit because gov assistance is sporadic and patchwork.
@ChrisWilms23 @albertcardona @Polypompholyx The moderate climate meant that houses didn't have to be super insulated for winter or super cooling in summer – and so they never were built that way. Prolonged cold weather wasn't a problem, just keep the fires going, just crank up the storage heater. All fine and dandy until we had price gouging of utilities.
The best we managed for decades was harling the outside of brick or stone for better rain protection.
@talloplanic @ChrisWilms23 @Polypompholyx Somehow the provision of coal-burning fireplaces in every room speak to me of a time when this was rather critical to love through winter. Plus retired professors here speak of an age (the 1970s) when they had to rush the anatomy lab demonstrations early in the Autumn because otherwise the ponds would freeze and the fish out of reach. Hasn’t been a concern in decades. Winters were harsher but insulation lacking.
Charlotte Kirchhoff-Lukat@Polypompholyx Yeah, it's bizarre. A well-insulated house keeps heat in AND out.
The only point they have is large south-facing windows for a greenhouse effect - good when it's cold, bad when it's hot. (But in my experience British houses aren't usually built to exploit the greenhouse effect.)
The only point they have is large south-facing windows for a greenhouse effect - good when it's cold, bad when it's hot. (But in my experience British houses aren't usually built to exploit the greenhouse effect.)
@charlottekl @Polypompholyx Utilising the sunlight for heating in winter but keeping it out in summer is surprisingly straightforward as well. Either by shading the higher standing sun (low tech) or by coating the windows to reflect the IR light at certain angles (higher tech, but I first saw this in windows installed in 1981).
@ChrisWilms23 @charlottekl Yeah, we have a south facing conservatory. It’s basically a crematorium for plants unless the doors are open 9 months of the year, but it’s a useful free radiator in spring and autumn.
It's a me, Mauro@Polypompholyx hit the nail on the head there
teledyn 𓂀In my long and distinguished career as a human being, I have lived in many houses, in several countries, and it seems to me we knew perfectly well how to build homes to fit regional climate requirements up to about 1925.
After that, I'm guessing builders figured it would be cheaper to just use more oil and electricity.
Epistatacadam@Polypompholyx I can recall speaking to a "consulting engineer" married to an architect in the late 1980's and he said why would anyone want to exceed the building regs minimum for both thermal efficiency and sound proofing as l well as airtightness, with controlled ventilation. So we could have been doing it for 30 years plus.
Wasted opportunity of the oil crunch.....
Wasted opportunity of the oil crunch.....
A bend gules: dabbler in arts@Polypompholyx OMG this 100x over.
No insulation, no air circulation design, terrible heating systems.
Crazy making bc it's a health hazard: vulnerable people die from respiratory disease in ordinary UK winters, in numbers that they don't in colder countries. This winter will be grim.
No insulation, no air circulation design, terrible heating systems.
Crazy making bc it's a health hazard: vulnerable people die from respiratory disease in ordinary UK winters, in numbers that they don't in colder countries. This winter will be grim.
Exiled New Yorker- Connie@Polypompholyx
I’ve heard heating systems/house construction is miserable in England, better in Switzerland, and it’s awful in the US. My apt is 21 years old and it’s so drafty the furnace runs constantly at 68°F/20°C. It’s only 500 sq ft /46.45 sq meter.
I’ve heard heating systems/house construction is miserable in England, better in Switzerland, and it’s awful in the US. My apt is 21 years old and it’s so drafty the furnace runs constantly at 68°F/20°C. It’s only 500 sq ft /46.45 sq meter.
Gaston@Polypompholyx big sigh! I’ve just been looking at flat prices today in London £500,000 for a piece of shit
@gaston Yup. We managed to buy in London about 8 years ago, but it was a tiny 2-up-2-down Victorian terrace with paper thin walls, no damp-proof course, and directly under Heathrow 27R flightpath. Noisy, cold and damp. 400k and change then. Now in a 70s build in Sussex: better (but - hello - 2.5 h round-trip commute), but still: wall insulation is poor and very difficult/expensive to retrofix.
James Gleave🚶🚲🚌🚄🚊🚇🤘⚽🎮@Polypompholyx the majority of older housing was built for having a coal fire in each room for heating. Modern housing is better, but cutting building costs has an impact.
A hard reality is that you have to constantly maintain and upgrade your house. Insulation, replacing windows and doors, maintaining central heating. Not a lot of people can do that, or afford someone to come in and so only do it when it breaks.
@james_gleave2 That was the case in our old place; but for the 70s build we're in now I'm less clear what the excuse is, given it was *built* during a decade-long energy crisis. We've replaced front door, blown glazing, added solar, masses of attic insulation, replaced the roof, per-room thermostats, etc. Only things more we could do are retrofit additional wall insulation and install heat pump/recovery/aircon: the latter is on the list for next year (if we can afford it).
Daniel@Polypompholyx Same here in Japan. Single paneled windows in cities with < 0 degrees in winter and ±34 in summer. But people can't figure out why their gas/electric bills are so high.
Pete@Polypompholyx I'm not disagreeing, but it's also possible that some peoples houses are too hot, other people's houses too cold, and both groups complain.
@pete Insulation works both ways, so there's a fair amount of cross-over I think. I've lived in 12 places in the last 25 years, and not one of them was adequately insulated. Most of them were at least two of {too hot in summer, too cold in winter, too noisy all the time, damp, badly ventilated, full of indoor wildlife}, and in all but 2 of them, I was paying some other ****'s mortgage for the 'privilege' of being uncomfortable.
Amateur Human@Polypompholyx those houses built before 1950 have a good reason to be a bit crap.
The ones built from the 60s onwards are crap because house designers in the UK have been laughing at you all.
The ones built from the 60s onwards are crap because house designers in the UK have been laughing at you all.
@Polypompholyx a house designed to keep the heat in also keeps the heat out very effectively. However you need to close all the windows/curtains while the inside temperature less than outside temperature and nobody seems to understand this...
Cathybug
Kevin Karhan 
@Polypompholyx EXACTLY:
If you look at houses from #Germany on a #thermal camera you wouldn't see if they're vacant or nor, but #UK houses shine brighter in thermal imaging than an overcrowded German Christmas market.
Schroedinger@Polypompholyx The thing is, houses were built to retain the heat that you put in from fires in the rooms. If you cannot afford to heat them, this does not help.
They are well built for the environment they are in, assuming you can afford to heat them. I am not saying it is efficient - although, of course, terraced/semi houses would help heat each other.
The core problem is energy prices and the lack of government investment in renewables.
Chester6Red@Polypompholyx Nothing will change without a massive effort either
@Polypompholyx Didn’t mean to bring things down,
@Chester66Red Eh. That’s just the way of things unfortunately. We’re doing what we can in our place but that’s wholly reliant on current financial luck. I should not need to install expensive solar to offset energy bills - our trashfire government should be investing in green tech and encouraging working practices that make that accessible to all.
@Polypompholyx #UK houses are so pporly insulated they're illegal to build across the #EU and illegal to rent out in #Germany due to excessive #energy consuption needed to keep them habitable
Axel Foley@Polypompholyx Exactly, a house which is built to be warm in Winter, will also be cool in Summer.