The Ongoing Legacy of Legislation

The regeneration of new large scale housing schemes appear to be springing up around the country to meet the shortage of dwellings. Many of the schemes, from a cursory point of view, appear to be system timber panel type frames which are rendered or brick faced. Many of these schemes are being built on sites with are known to suffer from an increased flood risk.

It is believed that the reasons for timber construction are: increased speed of construction over traditional houses and a lower, more affordable price. These lightweight timber systems are compact, highly insulated and energy efficient in heating terms.

The pre-finished panels which form many of the standard systems are factory manufactured (MMC) and clipped together on site within a few days.

Building Regulations Standards dictate the fabric U values required and the high levels of air tightness of the built form. Government policy has dictated these changes to try to reduce carbon emissions.

It should be remembered that thermally lightweight buildings heat up very quickly, which is beneficial for buildings which have intermittent use but would question the logic for every day housing. The Government has funded many schemes to help homeowners of poorly insulated old properties to reduce their heating bills. It should be remembered that many of these properties are formed from traditional construction and would generally benefit from being warm in winter and cool in summer.

However, Building Regulations Standards have, in one way, been instrumental in increasing the energy consumption and carbon footprint of the built form in the UK. The highest energy demand for the country now exists in the summer period. The reason being is that it takes three times as much energy to cool a building per degree centigrade than to heat it. Therefore, with increasing mean global summer temperatures and the trend of building thermally lightweight properties which overheat rapidly in warm conditions, unless air conditioned, the dwellings become hostile environments for humans to live in.

An old, but well insulated traditional masonry and mortar type house, on an annual basis, is much lower in energy use terms than the new modern lightweight prefabricated ones. There are other limitations with MMC houses which can be discussed with and argued by anyone wanting to engage with this discussion on housing design: is there anyone there?

The question to ask: is the country invested in new housing which is fundamentally flawed in its design? Are we building “White Elephants” which will rapidly need to be replaced in the coming decades? In times of limited resource availability, should we not design and built houses with an expected service life of 120 years and which also run passively needing very limited technical fixes to make them serviceable?