Heat Loss in UK Homes - World Beating?

macman

Sea_Shell said:

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.

I wondered this the other day.

Does any other country (European or otherwise) have the row and rows of back to back Victorian terraces that we have in nearly every large town or city in the UK.

Is it a uniquely British thing?    And very much a product (symptom) of that era?


What's the equivalent in other countries?     Did they not copy us?    What did they do instead?

On nothing like the same scale. Suburban terraces and semis are uniquely British in large cities: far more people live in apartments in major European capitals, so the cities don't sprawl out like London does. Look at Paris, Berlin, Madrid and many others. 
London's terraces and semi's were largely built by private opportunistic developers (small builders, 2 or 3 houses at a time), with no overall plan from central or local government. The result was maybe visually attractive, but very inefficient in terms of land use.
Cities like Paris and Madrid were built to a more rigid plan imposed from above.

BUFF

Apodemus said:

Mstty said:

Dolor said:

Apodemus said:

Sea_Shell said:

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.

I wondered this the other day.

Does any other country (European or otherwise) have the row and rows of back to back Victorian terraces that we have in nearly every large town or city in the UK.

Is it a uniquely British thing?    And very much a product (symptom) of that era?


What's the equivalent in other countries?     Did they not copy us?    What did they do instead?

I would go further and suggest that these back to back terraces are a uniquely English thing (possibly only in the Midlands?).  For whatever reason, Scotland tended to build flatted tenements to meet the needs of workers for industrial expansion, rather than the rows of brick terraces found in England.  In semi-urban or rural areas, it was not uncommon for these tenements to be only two-storeys, sometimes with an outside stair.  

One has to wonder how many of these properties are heat pump suitable (not withstanding the lack of insulation)?

As suitable as gas as it will be the same heat loss whether gas or electric heated surely?

Surely the main issue is getting enough radiator surface to meet the heat requirements of the rooms. It's not gas versus electricity but absolute heat output per room that is the limitting factor. Cost aside, a direct electric heater might adequately heat each room, while a heat pump would need really big radiators to meet the same heat output.

 I can't speak for the back-to-back terraces, but Scottish sandstone tenement buildings can be retro-insulated to modern standards... at a cost.

https://www.gla.ac.uk/explore/sustainability/research/glasgowtenementretrofit/
If you Google you will find lots more stuff e.g. https://housingevidence.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/220412-A-Cost-Benefit-Analysis-of-a-Traditional-Glasgow-Tenement-Net-Zero-Retrofit_v3.pdf

The amount of work (& cost) involved is horrendous & of course in many privately owned tenements you would require every flat owner to go along with (& be able to fund) it.