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Getting an Energy Audit Done (Work not Home)
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kGarden



Joined: 01 Dec 2014
Posts: 178
Location: Suffolk, UK
PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 15 1:00 pm    Post subject: Re: Getting an Energy Audit Done (Work not Home) Reply with quote
    

sean wrote:
We're looking at doing this first when it should come after all the other stuff.


Is the other stuff subsidised? If not then no harm in doing this first? (North facing aspect apart!)

We looked at trying to improve the energy efficiency of our house. Not the same as an industrial lot, I'm sure, but perhaps similar in some ways. It was a nightmare ...

We put Fill in the cavity several years ago. That changed the balance of the building and the cold-bridging of the sills then started to give us some damp problems - solved by heating the rooms continuously, or opening the windows - negating the benefit of the energy saving from the cavity insulation!. The building already had double glazing (an earlier retro fit). We increased the insulation in the loft.

Next up from that would have been to insulate the walls. For us that would have been external insulation boards, render over the outside of that, and in the process move all the windows further out (so insulation layer was continuous) and upgrade them to triple glazed.

Our house was already relatively air tight (around 2 ACH), so the extra insulation combined with an air-tight membrane would have enabled us to get to Passive House standards (0.6 ACH), at that point we would need mechanical ventilation (combined with heat exchanger for heat recovery) which would have been disruptive to decorations in every room in the house.

We would not have been able to insulate the floor, so that would have presented a problem to the balance of heat in the building - probably could have offset that by excavating the foundations and insulating them on the outside. Existing radiators (cast-iron skirting type, so no easy "replace-with-smaller-ones" option) would then be oversized and, as we have very little control over the system - no zoning - we probably would have had a problem with radiators providing too much heat.

We opted to build a passive house extension instead!!, and hibernate in there during the winter. If we win the lottery we'll upgrade the original part of the house.

The economics of making your existing building very efficient will probably look better by knocking it down and starting again ... which to my mind is horrendous from a "green" standpoint. Good luck to the next generation in finding ways of retro-upgrading the existing housing stock, and I wish the government would hurry up and mandate Passive House standards for new housing stock - the less we build to current Building Regs the less will have to be upgraded later.

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