Heat Loss in UK Homes - World Beating?

macman

It's the penalty we are still paying for being  the 'cradle of the Industrial Revolution'. Much of our housing stock was built in the late 19th century/early 20th in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, with the rapid growth of London and other industrial cities. They were well constructed in terms of longevity, but insulation was simply not a consideration. Neither cavity walls not double glazing had been invented. You can retrofit d/g, but you can't economically insulate single-skin masonry walls. 
Such properties will never be brought up to current standards.

InvertedVee

I recall a conversation with a Siberian lady, who told me she couldn't find a flat in London that wasn't cold and damp. "In Siberia, our homes are always warm!"

Spoonie_Turtle

macman said:

It's the penalty we are still paying for being  the 'cradle of the Industrial Revolution'. Much of our housing stock was built in the late 19th century/early 20th in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, with the rapid growth of London and other industrial cities. They were well constructed in terms of longevity, but insulation was simply not a consideration. Neither cavity walls not double glazing had been invented. You can retrofit d/g, but you can't economically insulate single-skin masonry walls. 
Such properties will never be brought up to current standards.

According to Historic England the early Victorians started experimenting with it, but this quote was interesting "The London Building Byelaws of the early 1920s made it compulsory for one leaf to be a full brick wide and this may be part of the reason why relatively few cavity walls were built in London at this time."
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/eehb-early-cavity-walls/

Scottish brochs from 2000+ yrs ago used double-leaved walls for a form of insulation and ventilation (the gaps between were wide enough for staircases!), and there have been cases of mediaeval stone buildings being 'modernised' in the post-mediaeval period with an outer brick skin leaving a cavity, including down to the foundations and the ground made up around the new skin.  But cavity walls as a common building technique is something that obviously needed refining and standardising over time; the Historic England document highlights some of the problems of early attempts, and the potential problems of trying to insulate those cavities.

Unfortunately there may come a point where, for general housing stock rather than listed buildings, the interests of current-day inhabitants and their modern lifestyles and the financial cost of trying to bring them up to standard, would outweigh the historic and heritage value of them.  [And I say this as someone interested in archaeology with a keen awareness and appreciation that once heritage and historic assets have been changed or lost, that's it, no getting them back.]

MattMattMattUK

chris1973 said:

Well, if we have the highest number of poorly insulated homes in the World, pretty pointless still flogging the vast majority of us forms of heating which rely on high levels of modern insulation then, like ASHP.

Can't have it both ways.

The people that are spending £10k plus on heat pumps and solar will already have insulated their homes.

BUFF

M0KBJ said:

I recall a conversation with a Siberian lady, who told me she couldn't find a flat in London that wasn't cold and damp. "In Siberia, our homes are always warm!"

They had/have extremely cheap gas.

FreeBear

macman said: You can retrofit d/g, but you can't economically insulate single-skin masonry walls.

Depends on how much of the work you can do yourself. I've spent less than £500 on materials to date to insulate the solid brick walls here. In comparison, new DG windows & door has cost me £5K. But if I had to pay someone to do the work insulating the walls, I would probably have to rethink it.

jacko220

Building Regulations And U-values: How have they changed? - Great Home (great-home.co.uk)

May I suggest the above which is a brilliant exposition of the Thermal Insulation requirement of houses. When I started in the industry 1968, thermal insulation was npt required cavity walls where for stopping rain penetration into dwelling, when I started lecturing in the subject,1988 we had replaced the inner leaf of a brick cavity wall, with a concrete block and started to insulate lofts with mineral wool.
Since then the density of the block went down so we had to use low density aircrete blocks, in the 1990's we started to insulate floors, up until this time heat loss through ground floors was not taken into consideration when sizing boilers.
Then came Double Glazing and finally the assessment of Ventilation die to Pressurisation tests.
I have retired now but it looks like the death knell for the 11 inch cavity wall, probably by two low density aircrete blocks on the leaves of a cavity wall which is insulated and an insulated rendering on the outside. Maybe even a comeback of timber frame.
Triple glazing with low emissivity glazing will follow now.
The elimination of cold bridges but are actually hot bridges are coming to the fore too stop black mould growth which causes bronchial complaints, breathing in faeces of the house dust mite.

 INTEGER Millennium House - Wikipedia

For construction look at this one, I saw the first Smart meter in use here in the late 90's

If you look at the age of properties in the OP table, we are not building as many houses, despite the energy crisis of the 70's only briefly has an effect, this rise in ene rgy prices will lead to a reconsideration of house construction. This is also combined with our planning laws we have MOT's for cars but not MOT's for houses.?
Insulation is a reciprocal or law of diminishing returns calculation,
Hope this explains the situation.

jacko220

SEDBUK (Seasonal Efficiency of Domestic Boilers in the UK) Rating (homeheatingguide.co.uk)

This is probably the most important change, during Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) calculation with students in the early 2000's it became apparent that the efficiency of the boiler was the most important change that should be made. Hope this helps, you can insulate as much as you like but you will not get energy savings if the boiler is not efficient. Happy Christmas everybody.

Mstty

peter3hg said:

Mstty said:

Ready to be shot down but I suspect there hasn't been a well built estate house in the past 50 years. Profit over quality and the NHBC might as well no exist for building standards. Just a cheap insurance for if anyone sots something in 10 years and a rubber stamp.

A modern new build will be much more energy efficient than a 50 year old house.
Age is the biggest factor when determining how energy efficient a home is:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/ageofthepropertyisthebiggestsinglefactorinenergyefficiencyofhomes/2021-11-01

In England and Wales only 15% of houses are post 2000 and less than 8% built since 2010.
(https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/council-tax-stock-of-properties-2021)


It isn't modern houses we should be looking at, but the older housing stock.
The questions are:
Do we have a higher percentage of old properties than most countries?
Does the style of construction of our old properties make them hard to insulate?
Or more likely have we just failed to invest in brining our old housing stock up to standard?

I completely agree on the older housing stock we have in the UK

The point was don't automatically think your house is as efficient as the so cammed EPC or really on the building standards of the decade it was built in.

Shocking things are missed out on large estate builds by the major building companies. Unless you say at each stage every that should of gone in your house then presume something has not.

We don't build energy efficient passive houses like other countries we don't even add solar and pv hot water systems to each new house. We are decades behind other countries and it's because the building industry hold too much power.

Qyburn

peter3hg said:

Does the style of construction of our old properties make them hard to insulate?

Yes.  And the obsession with the current box-ticking EPC rating doesn't help, for example one of the EPCs I saw just had a Yes/No question along the lines of "Loft insulation over 400mm?" I can't remember the exact thickness but it specified something simply impossible in a traditional Scottish house as there is not 400mm (or whatever) space available. And since it's a Yes/No based solely on that thickness it means a house with the maximum possible insulation gets rated the same as one with none at all.