Pumping Hot Air

I went to see an air source heat pump installed in a loft today. I was invited to view the installation by the manufacturer because I expressed doubts about the viability of a heat pump in a loft.

I like to think I approach things with an open mind, but don't we all. Seeing the unit in action confirmed my worst suspicions but what I really wanted to witness was the noise level. It was actually quieter than I thought it would be but there was still a low hum vibration transmitted through the roof timbers across the top floor of the house and the huge fan moving air through the enclosed space of the loft was also clearly audible. The unit was less than a year old and it's in the nature of all appliances with a fan to get noisier. How many hotel air conditioning units have kept you awake at night? Or is it just me who stays in cheap hotels? The rep's reaction was to suggest that "You can turn it off at night". That is fine provided you don't need hot water first thing in the morning.

There is nothing wrong with the heat pump as such but putting it in a loft is self defeating. Apart from the noise the heat pump is cooling the loft. Again the rep, paid to defend it at all costs, told me that it was only lowering the loft temperature by 1 1/2°c. How they know this is anybodies guess because that figure must fluctuate wildly according to a number of factors such as outside temperatures and wind speed, but even if it were true it's not something to boast about. The whole point of a heat pump is to extract heat from the air so the more it grabs the better. The problem is that the colder you make the loft the greater the flow of heat from the house below. Basic physics dictates that hot will always flow to cold and the greater the temperature difference the faster the flow. "Ah yes but you can insulate it" said the rep. He is right of course and the idea would be that if the loft were cold and the house was well insulted the heat from outside the roof space would flow in to replace the heat pumped out but this loft was very badly insulated so the chances are that the temperature of the loft would be raised by heat escaping from the house. In some areas of the loft there was a 100mm of glass fibre which is inadequate and in other areas nothing at all, just the ceiling. On the plus side the heat pump captures some of the heat escaping from the house and returns it, but it takes energy to do that and it would be better to stop it escaping in the first place. Spending a fraction of that money spent on a heat pump to improve the loft insulation would have been far more cost effective and far greener.

Leaving aside the noise issue and the lack of insulation, the sole purpose of the heat pump in this particular house was to heat domestic water. Is this an economic prospect? Because the house has a gas boiler the answer has to be no. Solar panels would have been a much better bet because they use a minimal amount of electricity for the circulating pump.

The COP of the air source heat pump is around 2 at 50°c and the hot water needs to be 60°c to prevent legionellea so it still has to be topped up by the gas boiler or electricity. The heat pump is only running during the day (too noisy to run at night) so there is no off peak electricity to take advantage of, and a COP of 2 with peak rate electricity is no better than a gas boiler.

OK you could bring the cylinder up to 50°c during the day and top it up with off peak at night but with most tariffs you need to use a fair amount of off peak to compensate for higher day time rates. The whole thing is a minefield.

What concerns me most is that this sort of ill thought out installation (which don't forget the company put up as a show piece) will harm the cause of heat pumps. This is over-selling the technology. There are plenty of other places the heat pump could have been placed around the property which would have been better and there are plenty of jobs it can usefully do but it needs to be fed into a large reservoir of water in order to stop it switching on and off all the time. Nothing shortens the life of a heat pump more than switching it on and off all the time. Competing with a gas boiler to provide just the domestic hot water is the least viable application.

I didn't share my views with the householder because she is a very nice girl who is looking to do the right thing for the environment. It's just a pity that she wasn't given better guidance by the salesman.


Roger Bisby
Information for Building Projects, Renovation and DIY at SelfBuilder.net

Living in Fear

I got a call last night from the police. My mother had been burgled. The guy came into her living room while she was sitting watching television and stole her bag with all her money.

I went round to her house and made sure it was secure. Understandably she didn't want to stay there and is now terrified. I know I'm not alone in feeling very angry about the way that crime has taken over this country. If my kids go out for the evening there is always the concern that they might be attacked by some knife wielding drug crazed moron or even just a stone cold sober moron.

It is a very tired cliché to say that my mother's generation came through the war and are now living out their old age in fear from the enemy within, but it's true and nobody could ever imagine that this country would turn out to be so dangerous for the old and the young.

So now she will live under siege in her home and I will learn more than I ever wanted to about locks, chains and alarms. It reminded me that some years ago I took part in a security makeover show for the BBC in Manchester. We visited the most burgled street in Britain and spent a couple of days putting in all sorts of security products for the resident.

There was one elderly lady at the top of the road who was living behind locks and bars on every window and she was lamenting the fact that what was once a good street had turned into such a terrible place. We fitted a wireless burglar alarm for her and I went through the procedure of arming the ground floor zone so she could sleep safely upstairs with the ground floor protected against intruders.

She was around 85 at the time and though she was very well turned out and as sharp as a pin I took the explanation of the controls very slowly. She stopped me half way through the demonstration and said "You think I'm stupid don't you?". I denied it but she had clearly detected my patronising tone.

"Let me just tell you that during the war I worked on top secret scientific instruments. Just give me the instruction booklet and make us a brew. If I've a question I'll ask you."

I could have kissed her for her fighting spirit.


Roger Bisby
Information for Building Projects, Renovation and DIY at SelfBuilder.net

Bucking the Market

My daughter, Georgina, has just bought a house so it looks like I will be busy doing 'voluntary' work on it for a few months. The fact that she has bought a house at this time is either seen as canny or foolish. Some people think it is a bad time to buy because they see predictions of house prices falling still and some think it is a good time because they believe things are bottoming out.

Nobody knows which will turn out to be the case so it's a punt, or at best an educated guess. A year ago the price she paid for this property would have been seen as ridiculously low, now it's the market price. If prices fall by an average of 30% as some predict then conventional wisdom says she will have paid more than she need have. But the key word here is 'average'. Because the average market price falls, that doesn't mean all house prices will fall in line with the average. The likelihood is that the overpriced flats and new builds will take a hit but a house which has effectively bottomed out already will probably stay there. The price she paid takes account of market pessimism so if the prediction is for a 30% fall this is the reason it isn't selling at the moment but it doesn't necessarily mean it will go lower. There are people out there who believe that if they hang around long enough some desperate person will sell them a house for next to nothing.

There is a great deal of pent up demand in the housing market and we have stopped building at the very time that there is a shortage. Personally I have no desire to see house prices go back up, so a trickle of activity that doesn't open the flood gates is the best thing. The problem is that markets rarely work in that way. We have Bulls and Bears. At the moment it is the Bears who are dictating things but when the Bulls sniff a little blood it will be like Pamplona. People will get trampled in the rush and there will be those following behind who see it all disappear in a cloud of dust but have no chance of catching it.

This of course is just another prediction to go with all the rest out there and it means nothing because nobody really knows but, though following the herd is safe, it will never win any prizes.


Roger Bisby
Information for Building Projects, Renovation and DIY at SelfBuilder.net

Waste of Space

I attended a press event the other day for a manufacturer of water heaters and boilers. It doesn't matter which one because what I have to say broadly applies to them all.

The Chief Executive was proudly telling us how the company is driven by innovation and they showed us some of their latest ‘innovative products’. Though I didn't want to rain on their parade I was a little underwhelmed. Most of what they showed us were 'me too products'. A new unvented cylinder with an extra bit of insulation . An under-sink hot water heater that did nothing more than deliver hot water. Don't they all do that. They showed us pictures of the heater installed under the sink. Who wants a water heater under their sink anyway? Once you have one of those in your cupboard there is very little space left for all the things that should go under there.
"Where else are you going to put it?" they asked me.
The company employs no less than 18 full time R&D staff and between them they hadn't managed to find an alternative place.

Space, or lack of it is the big issue these days. As land prices go up houses are getting smaller. Yet everybody wants more bathrooms and bigger kitchens but customers hate seeing anything to do with plumbing. Instead of designing new look casings and salivating over the sleek lines manufacturers need to think up ways of making their products disappear.


How about putting that water heater in the kick space under the unit? A small removable cover in the bottom of the kitchen cupboard to change the immersion heater is all you need to see. The kick space under the unit is dead space in all kitchens. Why not put a central heating boiler in there while you are at it? Why do boilers all have to be the same size and shape?. It makes no sense to have a boiler taking up kitchen cupboard space yet making them fit into cupboards has been the holy grail of boiler design for years. Yet when you take the casing off a boiler the components are anything but the shape that covers them. A cylindrical boiler with a coil heat exchanger shouldn't be hard to design. It could even lie along the top of some wall units, tucked in at the back.

A new solar cylinder was also unveiled at the do, but it looked like every other cylinder except that the extra coil makes it almost as tall as a man. What modern home has space for a 210ltr solar cylinder?
Why not make it so it can lie on its side in an eaves cupboard or why not make a matrix of hot water tubes that can be placed inside the 100mm space of a stud wall. The space between floor joists is also wasted. Why not make a boiler to go in there? There is around 350mm of gap between joists and it is often 200mm deep. Again a simple trap door would do for servicing.

Haven't they noticed that there is also a lot of space under the bath? What a perfect place for a water heater or a boiler. At present in design terms there is very little to choose between one manufacturer's products and another. What we need now is not lip service to innovation but some real ideas which address the needs of installers and end users. Manufacturers need to think outside the box to give the market some real choice and the market will then respond with some enthusiasm.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Changing the Script

When I was trying to get cavity wall insulation in my house I started by phoning a cavity wall insulation firm. Well it seemed like a good place to start. The man told me that they could do my house for £450.00 but if I went through my energy supplier I would get it a lot cheaper because of a government grant.
I phoned my electricity company and the guy asked me for the age of the property.
"1905" I told him.
"Ah sorry that's too old."
"What do you mean too old?"
"It won't have cavity walls. They didn't start putting cavity walls in until around 1936"
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"Because it is written on my sheet"
"Well I can assure you that my house has got cavity walls"
"That will be very unusual"
"No it won't there are thousands of them in my area all built before the 1st World War and all with cavities.
"No they won't be proper cavity walls"
"What sort will they be?"
"I don't know but we need 50mm cavities ".
"Mine are two inches which is 50mm"

After a little more persuading he took my details and told me a surveyor would be in touch. Nobody called and after a couple of months I called back. There was no record of my call so I started again. It was all going so well until we reached the question about the age of the property.
"Oh no sorry that is too old"
"You are going to tell me that cavity walls were invented in 1936 by a man named McCavity."
"I don't know who invented them but 1936 is the oldest property we do."
"Look I don't want to appear pushy but I have cavity walls and I want them insulated so can't you just forget the date and fill in the form."
"It's no good the computer will reject it."
"So tell the computer 1936."
"I can't. These calls are recorded."
"Yes I know, for training purposes."
"Yes."
"So why don't they tell the people they are training with these calls that cavity walls go back to just after the turn of the century? "
"I don't know the answer, I can't help you any further. I'm sorry. If there is nothing else......"
I left it for a few months and called them back
"Age of property?"
"1936"
"OK, how many bedrooms does it have."
"Is there a right and wrong answer here because now I've got to level two in this game I don't want to blow it?"
"We just price the job on the number of bedrooms the surveyor will check".
That turned out not to be the case. In fact the surveyor didn't even turn up and I was beginning not to care.
I was worn down by the whole process. I left it a few months and in a fit of enthusiasm and annoyance I called up. The man explained that they were busy and I would just have to be patient. I thought I had been but he means more patient but I was grateful that my name was still on the list. Eventually a surveyor turned up.
"This house looks old when was it built?"
"1905"
"That's too old. It says here 1936"
"A mistake probably but don't worry it has cavity walls and they are the right size, it is a perfect house. It is crying out for insulation. My neighbour has cavity insulation in his 50mm cavity and they were built in the same year".
"OK I'll put it through but don't blame me if they can't do it."
The guys that eventually came and did the job were unphased by the age of the property. In fact they told me that they preferred older houses because the mortar is sand and lime so it is easier to drill.
"We wish they were all like this"
"Well I can tell you why you don't get more of them". I said.
In truth after all the fuss and delays it was worth the wait. The house is a lot warmer, especially on windy nights when the wind used to whistle around the cavities and found its way in through the small gaps around the joist ends and up through the floor boards in the bedrooms. Stopping that air movement is really a large part of the saving. Cavity walls were after all initially designed to trap air in between two skins of brickwork so, in theory, they should form an insulating layer but they could never make them airtight without mastics and neoprene seals. The air could still run in and out through shrinkage gaps around windows and tiny gaps in the mortar around pipes etc. Filling them with insulation simply stops the air moving around so much and creates micro pockets of trapped air.

All insulation works in this way and it only works when it is dry. The thing that concerns many people about filling cavities is that damp can travel across the insulation and this needs to be considered especially on walls exposed to driving rain. It hasn't happened on my house and it hasn't happened on my neighbours. The guys that pump in the insulation tell me it is very rare to get problems. They shared my view that the house was well built and the age isn't an issue but I had to lie to get it done.

I wonder how many pensioners, in dire need of cavity insulation to help them reduce their winter fuel bills, have been rejected by their energy suppliers because their property is 'too old'. Unless they happen to have some knowledge of building construction they would probably take the word of the kid in the call centre and resign themselves to the fact that it is another one of life's little treats that they don't quite qualify for. And the kid in the call centre is just working from a script but I get the feeling that somebody needs to change that script.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Men of Ideas

I have often found that doing a repetitive job is very relaxing. Physical work that doesn't require too much concentration or working out gives you plenty of time for contemplation. For example bricklayers appear to be a fairly lighthearted bunch. They have plenty of time to day dream when they are laying bricks to the line but waht do they dream about? You might suppose it is Page 3 models and you may well be right but I can tell you that many are also busy inventing things.

The reason I know this is because, over the years, I have met a regular stream of bricklayers who have brought me inventions to look at. They aren't always inventions for laying bricks (that seems to have remained the same for more than 3,000 years) but brick layers tend to spend time looking at other people's jobs and thinking of ways in which they could be done better.

That isn't always a recipe for success because until you have done the job you don't always know why it is done in a certain way. But it is in the nature of inventions that people keep them secret until they have secured patents, so they aren't always that well researched. Several thousand pounds later they reveal their idea and go looking for a manufacturer. Sometimes it makes a fortune but often they find that their invention isn't quite as ground-breaking as they imagined.

For every successful invention there are probably ten thousand that consume a vast fortune in patents, marketing and manufacturing before they disappear without trace. Some even come back every few years like the beast that wouldn't die.
I have also seen inventors clinging to their idea like the wreckage of a sinking ship while everyone around them is in the lifeboat begging them to swim to safety.
I have met inventors who have lost their house and their wife because they just wouldn't leave their idea alone and go back to their day job.

The ones that have been successful have either given the idea to someone else to develop and just taken a royalty or had the drive and good judgement to tackle all aspects of the route to market without being mugged on the way.

I must confess that I have had a few ideas myself, that may or may not see the light of day. Every time I think I might do something with them I remember that lonely bricklayer in his suit, trudging the halls of Interbuild with his prototype and a briefcase looking for anyone who will give him five minutes.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Prizes for all

I spent last night (and the early hours of this morning) celebrating at a marketing awards ceremony in London. To anyone who isn't familiar with these industry awards I can say that these awards are like any other competition, highly regarded by the winner and derided by those who don't win. Our winning entry was for Switch On MK which is a podcast that goes out to electricians. It was dreamt up and produced by London based Facta PR and MK Electrics marketing supremo Joanne Reynolds as a way of reaching electricians with important technical information. The Podcast has now picked up three awards and is attracting interest from other companies in the industry. In many ways the podcast is an ideal medium. Like radio it has better pictures. In fact I don't even like the idea of publishing photographs of those taking part because I think when you hear someone on the radio you have a picture in your head and it is always a disappointment when you see the person behind the voice. When I worked for LBC on the Fixit Phone In I well remember the look of disappointment on people's face when I met them at a road show or similar event.
That isn't false modesty on my part it is simply that our imagination is so much more powerful than we give it credit for. It is the reason why a film hardly ever does justice to a book. How could it? The reason that those who read books love them so much is because they are collaborating in a creative process rather than passively sitting on the receiving end.

Much of the audience we reach with the podcast will never listen to speech based and those that do probably listen to Talk Sport. Statistically there is little chance that they would have had the pleasure of listening to a radio play on BBC Radio 4. This is probably a good thing because when you get into a good radio play the work rate gets slower and slower and you find yourself transfixed. On several occasions I have parked around the corner from my destination because there is still ten minutes left on the afternoon play. If Radio 4 plays ever grab a mass audience the productivity of the nation will fall during those 45 minutes or whatever.

So if you have a site where the guys like to play the radio the best bet is to keep it tuned to something upbeat and inane. On one site recently the ceramic tilers had a ghetto blaster playing CDs of trance music. It sounded like Ibiza. Oddly enough I could see exactly why and how it helped them to lay tiles and it echoed brilliantly against the hard walls and floors. It got me thinking that different trades could be suited to different music because it fits the activity.

Bricklayers. Pink Floyd Another brick in the wall. (too obvious) but you could lay bricks to it.
Plasterers. Dire Straits (money for nothing)
Plumbers. Tricky this but probably Handel's Water Music.
Roofers. The Beatles. Fixing a hole where the rain comes in.
Carpenters. If I were a Carpenter. A bit of an insult to carpenters really because it is saying if I were just a lowly carpenter. It is a great tune though but the Tim Hardin original gets a lot less air plays than the Four Tops which is a shame.
Electricians. Anything by AC/DC.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Room to Breathe

It has been raining all weekend which tends to make me feel a little trapped. You can tell by my wrinkles that I am the outdoor type so I went out for a bike ride yesterday and a walk today. It is, after all, only rain and to tell the truth I enjoy braving the elements and tramping around like a nutter in my Gortex jacket and over trousers. I take a childish delight in the fact that I am warm and dry. A bit like a kid stamping through puddles in wellies. It is almost as if I am defying the jacket to leak but I don't suppose it ever will.

I have heard of Gortex leaking. I was in a branch of Cotswolds Outdoor shop in London and a bloke came in with a Gortex jacket which he said was porous along the arms. The man behind the counter said it was probably a fault and all he could do is send it back. I hesitated to say anything for a while but in the end I couldn't resist it. "Have you tried giving it a wash and a light tumble dry?"

"Oh no we couldn't condone putting it in a tumble dryer". said the shop assistant huffily.

"Well you might not but that is what it suggests in the care instructions". I replied.

The man who brought the jacket in was equally surprised so he looked on the label of a new garment which he picked off the rack. He read it out loud.

"Tumble-dry warm. The heat from the dryer will help to reactivate the durable water repellent (DWR) treatment on your garment's outer fabric. I'll give it a try. Thanks for your help".


Clearly it was the first time he had read this information. Despite having paid two hundred quid for the jacket he hadn't so much as given the instructions a glance. It is a common problem. "As a last resort read the instructions" is a national motto of many and even the bloke in the shop was more willing to pack and post the garment than read the instructions. Mind you he didn't look very pleased with me either. Nobody likes a smart arse and the definition of a smart arse is someone who knows something that you don't.

So here goes.
Gortex is made up of millions of tiny holes that keep water droplets out but let vapour through. These micro-porous holes get clogged with dirt and they need cleaning out. The repellent then needs to work its magic over the holes on the outer layer to stop the fabric becoming saturated. Also moisture that wicks through from within will condense on the outside and roll down the surface like water off a duck's back. Preventing water absorption also keeps the fabric feeling light. When it was first invented, by accident I believe, it was revolutionary but now we take breathable fabrics for granted. Gortex is even used in heart surgery though how you tumble dry it I am not sure.

The technology has since migrated. Now we have breathable fabrics in buildings as well as clothing. Breathable membranes are used under roof tiles to allow moisture to escape whilst keeping out any leaks in the roof. The membrane will keep out rain and wind but let moisture escape from the house. A miracle for sure because you don't have to ventilate the roof space and that cuts down on draughts which keeps the house warmer. But once again you need to read the instructions. Roofers have come to rely upon breathable membranes to take care of all moisture problems in the roof space and you now see fewer and fewer tile and soffit vents, so they must believe it works. Well yes and no, sometimes they ask the membrane to do too much.


A breather membrane, like a water proof jacket, is capable of dealing with a given amount of moisture per hour depending upon temperature and pressure. In the case of the house you need to stop it sweating too much. If the passage of water vapour from within is not restricted by a vapour barrier and a sealed loft hatch etc. then too much vapour will enter the cold roof space and saturate the air.
To reduce the amount of vapour in the roof space it needs to be cleared from the house by extractor fans. These are now a requirement of the Building Regulations in kitchens and bathrooms so the problem will be taken care of automatically within a new building but if a breathable membrane is being used on an older house as part of a re-roof then these points need to be looked at specifically and with no building inspector involved, who is going to carry out the survey?

As much as I love roofers they aren't given to reading instructions. So they certainly won't go around the house and check details such as sealed loft hatches and extractor fans? Like the man taking the Gortex jacket back roofers will naturally blame the product for any short fall and if the man in the merchants has also neglected to read the bit of paper he will be shrugging his shoulders and laying the problem at the door of the manufacturer. Technical reps must spend half their life looking at the same set of problems over and over. Many web sites have a category FAQ's 'Frequently asked questions' but it is FUQs 'Frequently Unasked Questions' that cause all the problems.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Silence Is Dangerous

I have been out today to the old Brooklands race track in Surrey, which is now home to Mercedes Benz World. I am no petrol head but I wanted to go and look at the latest innovations by Mercedes and Mitsubishi. You often hear the theory that motor manufacturers are secretly sitting on the successor to the internal combustion engine but won't release it for fear of destabilising the global economy. In other words they are waiting until the oil runs out and at one minute to midnight they will pull the dust sheets off an invention that they have been sitting on for twenty years. This is yet another ridiculous conspiracy theory that doesn't stand scrutiny.

From what I saw today these motor companies are pouring money into research and development of new fuel technologies like there was no tomorrow, which may well be the case. In fact they are putting in one million Euros per day, which doesn't sound much like the are waiting until the oil runs out. What they have achieved so far is just the start but it is impressive. I got to drive some of their latest offerings which include The Smart electric car, a hybrid lorry and a natural gas powered van plus a couple of vehicles that have stop start technology, which prevents fuel wasted when idling. That idling fuel amounts for one sixth of everything we use. I particularly liked the hybrid lorry because it decides whether to run on battery or diesel according to the load on the engine. You can hear it change over as you drive along

The one reservation that I have about this technology is that it is far too quiet. During the transition period when we are running electric and internal combustion vehicles I predict a sharp rise in the number of pedestrians run over simply because they didn't hear these new vehicles coming. Despite the fact that we all know that you must look right and left before crossing the road many of us step off the kerb depending solely upon our hearing to tell us whether traffic is coming. Every cyclist knows this to be true.

Old habits die hard but the young iPod generation may already be better equipped for the new electric vehicle age, because they have already given up using their ears to cross the road or do anything much other than receive the relentless beat of
music. For them looking is the natural option, as is lip reading, so they stand a far better chance of surviving.

It isn't often that you see natural selection or Darwinism in action before your very eyes, or ears come to that.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Crisis? What Crisis?

A friend of mine runs a fairly large plumbing firm and he tells me that he's inundated with boiler replacements at the moment. It seems that the soaring cost of fuel has finally driven people to look for new efficiencies. The Government has also announced that massive funds will be made available for insulation and draught-proofing. Inevitably there are those who pour scorn upon this initiative and would prefer the money to come directly to those who need it most. The fact that the money is being clawed back from excessive profits made by energy suppliers doesn't mean that it should simply be given straight back to them. Sooner or later we have to face the facts that fossil fuels are finite and that we should be doing everything in our power to avoid squandering them.

All efforts to appeal to people's social conscience have achieved insignificant progress compared to the 20% hike in prices we have seen recently and yet there's still a huge amount of waste. We are dancing on the Titanic, with people driving their obese kid's distances of less than a mile to school and sitting in stationery cars with engines running, often for quarter of an hour or more outside the school gates just to keep the single occupant warm. People do this in the certain knowledge that there is still plenty left underground. Even if there is, even if we are barely half way through the world's oil and gas reserves at just 7% growth in consumption (remember China and India here) we will double our consumption in ten years and that will be the end of that.

I know there are people reading this who don't believe the figures, by all means feel free to dispute them but do the math first. Most people have heard the story about the bloke who tricked a king into giving him a fortune by saying "Give me one grain of rice on the first square of the chess board and two on the next and so on". By the time you get to the 64th square you are into something very big. How big? A warehouse full? enough to cover the country? Don't try working it out on your calculator, it isn't powerful enough. The amount of rice is more than all the rice produced in the world. Stupid king, all he had to do was get a bloody great abacus and spend a lifetime counting.

So if we have an increase in fuel consumption of just 7% per year that will double our consumption every ten years. The amount of oil and gas we'll then consume in the following ten years will be more than we have consumed since we dragged the first barrel out of the ground. Most of us are like that king; we have no way of processing these figures even in our imagination. It is just too much to contemplate and we shut down. In fact even people who are paid to know these things are often unable to grasp what is really happening.

Despite all the rhetoric from the Government and local authorities, about saving energy we still aren't really serious. Public buildings, and offices are often overheated simply to allow people to wear summer clothing all year round. I was visiting a relative in hospital recently and the place was stifling with radiators pumping out heat on every floor and windows flung wide open in an effort to cool the building down. In the summer you see the reverse. The people working in my local filling station wear body warmers to avoid the chill brought on by the excessively cold air conditioning.

Of course the most conspicuous waste of all is the traffic jam which brings a special brand of misery to hundreds of thousands of people every day. Millions of litres of motor fuel (possible one in ever six tank fulls) are wasted while we sit waiting to move, and in the UK the answer to that seems to be to bring even more people into what is now officially the most crowded country in Europe. 350 people for every square kilometre is the average, and if you live in the South East it can be twice that. Ah well if we carry on like this we will double the population and the close proximity of all those extra people means that we won't be half so cold when the Russians turn off the gas.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

'Not So Grand' Designs

The bloke down the road is having an extension built. The job is being done by Steve a friend of mine. The customer is, or was, a graphic designer. When work dried up in that field he turned his hand to decorating. He is meticulous, about anything he does and he took great pleasure and pride in designing the extension. He is proud of it but to most people the glaring omission in the plan is a window looking out into the garden. Instead he has a brick wall with cupboards on it. The daylight to the kitchen is provided by four Velux windows. I am a big fan of roof lights but looking up to the sky is no substitute for looking out on a lawn and trees. Most people these days are desperate to get as much light into their homes as possible and I fear that, should he want to sell the house, this will put off many prospective buyers.


Now I know that everyone is entitled to design their house the way they like it. So why am I annoyed by the way he has vandalised this once charming Victorian semi? Do I care how he dresses, what books he reads or where he goes on holiday? Not one bit, but somehow what people do to their houses affects me.

I don't think I'm alone in this. If I walk down the road and see an example of stone cladding or day glow fluorescent masonry paint over what was once perfectly adequate brickwork I feel some sense of outrage. If I see someone replace a slate roof with large concrete interlocking tiles I feel a sense of disappointment that they took the cheap option at the expense of good taste. Although most buildings are privately owned there is some sense in which we all have collective ownership of them. Architecture, even on a small scale, gives us a sense of well being and it is defines where we live. We take pleasure in seeing a well kept village, a lovely house or even a palace and we are excited by iconic structures such as The Gherkin.

Planning laws are in some sense our attempt to regularise individual expression for the greater good. Yet the evidence suggests that we built much more attractive buildings before planning permission. Why should a handful of councillors on a committee have any more idea about what should or should not be built than anyone else? If the bloke down the road wants to build a claustrophobic cell and shut out views of suburbia why shouldn't he. In fact he did, and they let him and though I support individual expression in theory, I can't help thinking that they shouldn't have.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Rising Damp

I got a call from a friend of a friend who had been suffering from persistent rising damp. He has spent a fortune on various remedies but still it came back. The flat was only twelve years old so it sounded to me as if the damp proof course had been breached in some way. The usual reason would be having a path or patio laid too close to the DPC height. When I arrived at the flat I was somewhat surprised to find that it was on the third floor. I have seen a lot of cases of rising damp in my time but never has it risen above 1 metre. I was ready to rule it out but when I got into the flat I could see all the familiar classic signs of rising damp. Large patches of bubbling plaster up to a height of around 900mm. Some patches were on internal dividing walls and some patches were on the outside walls or party walls to neighbouring flats. None of the other flats in the block had shown any signs of rising damp.

The patches seemed to coincide with radiators and my immediate thought was that the central heating system was leaking. "I've had it checked" he said. I subsequently found out that this problem had been going on for two years and a surveyor had originally diagnosed a central heating leak some time ago. The only problem with that diagnosis was that the system showed no pressure loss. This could of course have been because it was being slowly topped up by the filling loop so I disconnected the loop just to make sure and I told the householder to keep an eye on the pressure gauge. A week later there had been no sign of a pressure drop. "I think we can rule out the heating" I said. "Yes that it what the plumber told me" he replied. The householder then told me that he had a damp specialist company in around a year ago who had re-plastered the walls with a waterproof render. This is treating the symptom not the cause and judging by the bubbles and flaking plaster it hadn't even done that. All that work and disruption hadn't made the slightest difference.

It occurred to me that if the pipes feeding the radiators started in the hall cupboard where the boiler was and spread out like tentacles through plastic duct work set in the floor screed it was just possible that the duct work was also shared by another pipe which was leaking into the duct. The obvious place to start was in the cupboard. Unfortunately there was no sign of any duct work in the airing cupboard but I found that the pipes went through the wall and down under the bath. The bath panel was tiled in with no visible means of removal and that could have been the reason why nobody had pursued this line of enquiry. It took some patience to remove it without damaging the surround.

When I eventually managed to remove the panel I could see immediately that the flexible overflow pipe to the bath had fallen off at the top end and was dangling in the plastic floor duct. This meant that a good percentage of the water from the bath or shower was leaking into the ducts on a daily basis and was then being channelled around the house by a system of what were effectively small canals. The canals came to an abrupt end at the walls which, not surprisingly, were soaking up the water like a sponge.

I put the hose back on the spigot and secured it there with a Jubilee clip. Had he known the problem I am sure that the householder could have done the job. The total cost was 26 pence.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Time For A Change

I have been working with a very small team of volunteers on a project to modernise a bungalow which is used by spinal injury victims. Once they leave hospital in a wheelchair they move into a halfway house where they practice coping on their own but have the backup of a carer should they need it. Getting used to fending for yourself in this situation is no easy task and it obviously helps to have equipment that works. The charity that looks after these houses is called Aspire and we started working with them around twelve months ago with the intention of building up a network of tradesmen and women across the country. Each team could then look after its regional homes. It was a good idea but we failed to get the volunteers in any appreciable number. There just isn't the glamour.



Of course there is one sure fire way of getting volunteers and that is to get some television cameras in there. Even better, turn it into some sort of game or challenge. The bungalow we are working on was originally converted by another team of volunteers under the stewardship of Aneka Rice. This was probably the first of the genre of television makeover shows and the intentions of those who gave up their time were honourable, but judging by the results the whole team was put under impossible time pressure, and had to work through the night to turn the job around in time for the prancing Aneka to arrive fresh faced in her helicopter.



Considering the corners that had to be cut to meet the impossible deadlines, the building has stood up very well. The wet room less so, but wet rooms were in their infancy then and there just wasn’t the necessary kind of equipment around. That said the leaks around the tray were due to the fact that it was bedded-in on mastic and was never going to support the weight of a person and a powered wheelchair. The leaks made the joist rotten and the whole thing was a festering mass of decay. It didn’t help that the shower walls were lined with plasterboard stuck on top of wallpaper with tile adhesive. I can imagine the conversation that must have gone on as the guys discovered that, at four in the morning, they had run out of board adhesive. They then turned to the only adhesive they had and to be fair it lasted over twenty years.



Given that Challenge Aneka wasn’t a live show you have to wonder why it was so vital that the work was completed on time. The precedent they set in this impossible 48 hour makeover, or whatever it was, gave rise to Changing Rooms, DIY SOS and several other shows of this ilk. Most people watching them have some idea that they are watching a bodge job and that may even be part of the appeal but television executives believe that audiences will not put up with the pace of a job done in a realistic time schedule. They may well be right, but what few of them realise is that there is a knock on effect. Customer’s now expect their kitchen, bathroom or even loft conversion to be finished in a week.



This rush and tear culture is everywhere now and there is no going back. Every travel show now has a time beating element in it. A young lad cycles around the world and the only value is to do it faster than anyone else. He hasn't got time to lift his head and enjoy the view of stop and chat to the people he passes which would have made much better television than the sight of him pedalling furiously. And television is seeking out new subjects and ideas. We now have face lifts and even serious medical operations served up as infotainment. It is fascinating stuff but the pace is perhaps a little slow. Six hours for a triple heart by pass is surely too much. What they need is a girl with a clipboard and stopwatch cajoling them. Aneka where are you?


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net