zerochampion

Barratt blues

It's a somewhat unfortunate parallel. The volume housebuilder most gungho about building the highest level Code houses, Barratt, is now the one being pummelled in the City for the perilous state of its balance sheet. Chief executive Mark Clare, who spoke impressively about the challenge of achieving zero carbon at Think this time last month, is now turning his attention to a "heavy dialogue" with his firm's banks on debts and banking covenants, according to an interview in Building yesterday. I'm not sure whether there's an Icarus-like lesson here for those who boldly go before falling to earth or not.

Dunster and Egan - the unlikey pair

Two fundamental problems and challenges facing the industry in the past decade. Two figures with wildly different backgrounds and perspectives who come up with eerily similar conclusions. Step forward the unlikely pair - industrialist Sir John Egan and the architect Bill Dunster.

Egan wrote his report, Rethinking Construction, ten years ago and there's a good catch-up on what has, and hasn't, happened since in last Friday's Building.

Whither the BRE?

I am concerned about the BRE (Building Research Establishment). I am not alone. Lots of people are voicing doubts and misgivings, and they all seem to point to one critical event in the organisation’s 80 year history, the ill conceived privatisation that took place in 1997.

Up till then, the BRE had been part of the government, essentially an arm of the Civil Service, like the DVLA and the Jobcentre. It did, as its name suggests, lots of research and informed our building regulations. The privatisation was, of course, an attempt by the government to save a bit of cash: the government has continued to fund research at the BRE but it has been shaving away at this bit by bit, leaving the BRE to fend for itself.

Indifferent, energy inefficient, UK consumer ... come on down!

Reading the announcement: '12 Experts Sign up for Ecotowns Challenge,' it occurs to me that the Government communications people seem to have confused government policy with a reality TV quiz show amlagam. Is town planning a 'challenge,' then, like the Great Egg Race? If so, shouldn't Heinz Wolf, with his glasses on his head, be showing developer contestants a room full of bits of turbine, a slab of green roof and assorted Code for Sustainable Homes certificates?

Consumer confidence

Only now had time to draw breath after a hectic week. Not much time to consider a major piece of work by the NHBC Foundation on consumer knowledge and appetite for zero-carbon homes. Building has plenty of detail on this in today's edition, which essentially points out that while the industry and government has been beavering away at coming up with bold plans, definitions, targets and technical guidances they have as yet failed to communicate any of this to the general public.

Hips fiasco

It seems that in spite of warm words from the Government in recent months on the "successful and smooth" introduction of Home Information Packs news from the ground is somewhat different. Last week's article by my colleague Michael Willoughby in Building, and just as importantly the attendant reader reaction, gives the profession perspective, whilst an excellent piece in this month's Which magazine gives the consumer viewpoint. Both are pretty dreadful.

Code conflict

Interesting thread that has begun in response to Code coverage in last week's Building Design. The magazine started a debate on whether the CSH was working over a year on, pitting housing architect PRP's chairman Andy von Bradsky against your friend and mine Mark Brinkley (I have to admit having some hand in introducing him to BD). Brinkley brands it a "graveyard of good intentions" and commenter John Waldron agrees, describing it as "benign but ultimately harmful bureaucracy".

East London - refurbish and recycle

Two strong pieces of content in this week's Building Design, both focused on east London. The first concerns the paper's fantastically well supported campaign to save the Robin Hood Garden - editor Amanda Baillieu widens the argument from the architectural to the sustainable, vigorously claiming that the east London block of flats "is a sustainable community". Surely there must be red faces all round at quango English Partnerships, who is proposing the demolition of the estate.

Dunster video - Code 6 house costs 150K

Virtual event

Here's a new thing I'm working on - an virtual show called Sustainability Now. It will take place on 15 and 16 April and works a bit like an online conference. More information here. Interested in any thoughts on the content of the show, which will be programmed similarly to a live event, with seminars, audio, debates, surgeries etc. I'll be putting up the programme I'm working on later in the week. You can register for it for free here.

Weekend Review 23 - 24 February

The Independent bagged the scoop that all buildings will have to be zero carbon by 2020. Caroline Flint will apparently announce that the country will join France and the US to make plans for zero-carbon commercial buildings in just over a decade. Paul King of the UKGBC says the industry is ready to go and that several developers can go zero carbon pretty pronto. Dan Labad of Lend Lease said that waiting for the Government was a mistake.

Grand Designs craziness

The Middle Class obsession with food and property TV shows continues apace. I consider myself firmly in said group, getting back just in time of an evening to catch up with the seemingly endless editions of Masterchef with those two shouty blokes crying out what a huge day/competition/challenge it will be that day. Last night there was a seemless sequeway into Grand Designs, where people you inevtiably become irritated with try to rebuild a Middle Aged church tower/divert a river and create a pastiche castle/dig a massive £300,000 hole and then plonk a German prefabricated modernist house in the middle of it. On a hill in Bath. With traditional stone cladding.

Weekend Review

Ken's Congestion Charge is mutating into an emissions charge with confusing results. Some people point out that, since the area covered is expanding, more residents will be able to travel for free. The Charge is getting increasingly complex and Livingstone doesn't seem to have worked out the difficulties of pursuing this new policy - such as the need to raise targets based on performance over time. The Sunday Times points out others say that increasing numbers of cars - 10% - are now able to sneak in beneath the new £25 fee. Janice Turner in the Times says all these new, free-to-enter runarounds are driven by potential voters.

Is Prince Charles igniting a Civil War?

When is an eco house not an eco house? When Prince Charles builds one. Or so the boffins at the BRE would have us believe.

The uneasy alliance between Britain’s green building establishment and the Prince threatens to be blown apart by the decision to allow the Princes Foundation to build its version of an eco house at the BRE’s demonstration site in Watford. Currently, it’s home to hi-tech eco houses, notably the Kingspan Lighthouse and Stewart Milne’s Sigma House. But the Prince’s eco house will be decidedly low tech. It will almost certainly eschew modern methods of construction, will probably eschew all plastics and, horror or horrors, will cock a snook at the eco builders No 1 bugbear, airtightness.

Charles, Master Builder

Building Design News (so hot that it caused a ruckus in St James' Palace, so we hear) that Prince Charles is to build a traditional-stylee eco-home at the BRE has thrown up some questions about what makes an ecological building. From our technicalist standpoint here at Zerochampion, it seems to us that the fact that HRH will eschew airtightness measures and the home will only reach CSH 3 or 4 suggests he has either missed a trick or lost the plot.

The Green Gauge February 8th

A trawl through the web this week has revealed the Government's new plans for water usage, green gadgets and the new Housing Minister's first banana skin

Government will fluff zero-carbon homes, report warns

As found by Jo Will in the Society Guardian, a report in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, says that the Government should be making Code Level 6 mandatory for all new homes if it wants to deliver zero-carbon homes by 2016. With only housing associations required to reach Code Level 3 at present and no current obligations at all for commercial housebuilders, this is a problem. Another one is 'user error.' Where malfunctioning enregy systems, residents removing the technologies and installing 'low performance alternatives to suit their colour scheme' might be an issue.

Boris Johnson - green warrior?

Not sure what to make of the current race to become London mayor. Ken is being portrayed as rather less than scrupulous, whilst Boris is a buffoon. The latter is interviewed in this month's Regenerate magazine, which is dubbed the sustainability issue. He comes out green, although it doesn't quite feel like it's from the heart.

Shock Brutalist Loves of a Sustainabile Icon

Visited the yin and yang of architecture yesterday, in the form of the World's largest (HOK), famous for the Barclay's tower in Canary Wharf and Grosvenor Place, winner of the British Council of Office's best of the best in 2001, and Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, known for introducing straw bale houses into the mainstream. The firm with 2000+ employees worldwide said it was a pioneer of sustainability and gave me a 500 page book on sustainable design (second edition) while Sarah's firm, with about eight people barely mentioned the topic but embody it. It is surely a peculiarity of the term which forms half of my job title that two such different organisations can lay claim to it.

A housing minister... with experience

Who's worried about our new housing minister's knowledge of the sector? Does Caroline Flint know her Hips from her codes, her EPs from her EPCs? Well I've discovered conclusive proof that she has plenty of industry experience. Just have a look at this page of her website.

Existing housing stock, you shall go to the ball

Exciting talk from pioneering housing association director, Richard Baines, from Black Country HA at the National Housing Federation Environmental Sustainability Conference earlier today. He talked of wonderful improvements in green housing technology for exising homes including: nanoinsulation which achieves excellent figures at a tenth of the width - great for underfloor and tight roof spots; new wind turbines from Northern Ireland which might help keep the blades turning even when fixed to house gables; and gas-effect fires with small back boilers to allow water and space heating all in one.

The R word and sustainability

I don't know about you but it's been pretty gloomy year so far. And now the R word enters stage left. Yes recession appears on the cards. So where does this leave clients, both in the private and public sectors, and their decisions on future sustainable budgets? Will the talk be cheap or will the rhetoric really turn to reality?

Is this the end of south-facing glazing?

Guest post by fellow blogger Mark Brinkley

Open any book on house design written in the past 30 years, and it will almost certainly make the point that a well designed house will face south. Orientation, they call it. It means that there will be large areas of glazing on the south side, where the sun is to be found, and that the dayrooms — kitchen and lounge — will be situated on the south side to take advantage of this. Not only does this instinctively feel right, especially in the wintertime, but you also get a significant flow of solar heat coming into the house on sunny winter’s days.

Virtual city

I don't usually go in for New Year's resolutions but found myself listing around five of them about an hour ago. Am I getting old? One resolution was to open up a direct debit with Shelter, having passed around three homeless individuals on the way to the supermarket (breaking my resolution to cut out plastic bag usage on the way back - oops). The Shelter website also points you to a fun site called Build a city. You buy a virtual plot of land and then pop a house/trees/block of flats on it and flash up a message on it, for a donation. Neat idea.

More zero carbon follies

The proposal to build an eco estate at Hanham Hall, a disused hospital site in Bristol, has been kicking around for a while. It was one of the sites identified under the government’s Carbon Challenge, an initiative that has been somewhat trodden underfoot in all the excitement about Code Level 6 and the ten eco towns. Anyway, last Friday the government, in the persona of none other than the ubiquitous Yvette Cooper, announced that a winner has been selected to develop the Hanham Hall site. And the winner was…..

Barratt Homes!

Why go Code Level 5 or 6?

So asks Pooran Desai from BioRegional Quintain in another excellent article in today's Building Design. He works out the paybacks and savings on going to levels 5 or 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes and they don't amount to a hill of beans. Level 4 "is where we should probably be as an industry for the foreseeable future" he say. And then concentrate on renewable energy policy and on transport, where major gains can be made on emissions rather than spending wads of cash on upgrading to the upper echelons of the code.

One less blogger in town

Following the hasty departure of Judith Armitt as Thames Gateway chief executive earlier this week I see that the blog that she intermitently had kept up is now officially "closed" as of yesterday. That means you can't even access the comments that were on the site previously, which seems a little heavy handed to me. Blogging is surely about being a little freer with opinion and information, rather than the straightjacket of civil service. Perhaps she will vent her spleen about the bureaucratic nightmare of local and central government in a new independent one free from the constraints of an official departmental website.

Brad Pitt's New Orleans push

Brad Pitt, who recently appears to be under the impression that he looks cool in stupid hats, launched his drive for new green and flooding-proof houses in New Orleans yesterday. The campaign is called Make it Right and Pitt has enlisted 14 architects to work on designs for the Lower 9th Ward of the city, including our very own Adjaye Associates.

Upstream acquired

Very interesting acquisition struck earlier this month. Property consultant giant Jones Lang Lasalle has bought sustainability advisor Upstream. I'm sure we will see a lot more of this kind of activity in the coming months. Upstream seems to have an impressive list of clients and most recently compiled a report on the green credentials of leading housebuilders.

Olympics - bronze medal?

If as I just wrote 2008 (and beyond, of course) should be the year of delivery what are we to make of the Olympic green targets set yesterday? Permanent buildings to perform 15% better that Part L 2006 standards? Homes to reach Code Level 4? A legacy target of reducing emissions from the Olympics Park by 50%? I'm sure the clamour to keep costs down on this job has probably hampered the environmental ambition. So our next challenge for the next year and beyond is achieve the dream, to prove that the sustainable solution is the lowest cost one. It's a target set by a evangelical consultant I met last week and if he nails it I'm thinking he's found a licence to print money.

Maybe I was wrong...

Blogging is pretty ephemeral so sometimes you write something one day and then disagree with it the next. Such especially is the case with sustainability issues, when we rely on information that can then turn out to prefixed by mis-. Here's a couple of examples:

Code costs

This is purely anecdotal stuff but it's interesting to see the latest estimates being bandied around for complying with different Code for Sustainable Homes levels. On a press release I received from QS firm EC Harris on Tuesday reacting to the Queen's Speech housing announcement the company reckoned, in an aside, that hitting Level 6 would costs around 30K currently. Can it be done at all yet anyhow? Then last night a housebuilder I spoke to who is working on live plans to hit Level 5 reckoned the extra bill for hitting it was 37K. Sounds like the upper reaches of the Code are not that realistic a prospect as yet.

Eco-towns: only the fit need apply

Guest post by Mark Brinkley

The news that Health Secretary Alan Johnson would like the ten new eco-towns to become fit towns adds a new twist to an increasingly bizarre story. A week earlier, Johnson had gone on record as saying that he thought obesity was going to be as big a problem as climate change: now he says that he wants an anti-obesity agenda embedded within the eco-town proposals.

Not that you’d find any mention of such an idea within the original eco-town prospectus. Just the day before Johnson launched his big idea, I sat in on an eco-town presentation by Housing Minister Yvette Cooper and she made no mention of this new “cross-government” initiative. I would hazard a guess that she had no idea it was coming.

Questions, questions

Here's a pretty good indication of the urgent need for clearer information, training and guidance on the Code for Sustainable Homes. In the online seminar held on the Building this lunchtime there were no less than 162 questions submitted. These ranged from the general - airtightness, thermal mass, renewables - to the very specific. One listener who is building a three bedroom house in Dorset asked whether using flint-faced bricks from a demolished garden wall would score highly in the code. Apparently they do as long as they are left exposed.

Housebuilders' eco-credentials under scrutiny

New housing report launched today by Yvette Cooper. I will piece some more thoughts on this tomorrow. In the meantime the full report, which on an initial scan has lots of interesting stuff to say is available here.

Some optimism

After getting thoroughly grumpy about Government fudge and inaction this week it was nice to get out of the office and visit the BRE Innovation Park, which are housing new prototypes of efficient houses. Here I was greeted with some refreshing optimism. Yes, admittedly it was from the people who are behind the new schemes but I was pleasantly surprised at how livable they were. I popped in to the Sigma house, developed by Stewart Milne, and the Lighthouse, put together by Kingspan.

Plug number two - housing online seminar

I'm in full puff mode this morning, this time marketing a new online seminar on the Building website that will take place next week on the Code for Sustainable Homes. There more information on it in an article on the site.

Regs are not enough

Chris Twinn from Arup put across some strong and coherent points at the Merton Rule debate hosted by the UK Green Building Council. A lot of them were not that directly related to the subject of the discussion itself, which can often end in circular arguments between those that believe setting targets are a must to drive innovation and those that want more flexibility. Twinn's opening point, probably voiced before, was about demand in the first place. We've had building regulations for 30 years which are supposed to increase the efficiency of buildings but the evidence, actual usage, is that demand has risen.

Tommy Walsh's 60K house

For those fans of Ground Force out there builder Tommy Walsh is embarking on a rather more ambitious project than chucking a few slabs of concrete on a back garden. He's trying to build a 60K eco-house and it's on the Discovery Real Time show tonight at 9pm.

Delay in Hips rollout

Just picking up news, unconfirmed as yet, that the roll-out of Home Information Packs to one and two-bedroom properties has been delayed. Apparently housing and planning minister Iain Wright announced this during a question and answer session at the Association of Home Information Pack Providers annual conference today. The only reason they are holding back from this is due to "market volatility" Wright is reported to have said. Building will report on this more fully tomorrow.

Housing challenge

The new Sustainable Architecture book is a step forward. Rather than a glossy run through of pretty pictures and pretty words there's some real meat in the 45 case studies of sustainable projects the book looks at - I've written in more detail on it on the Building website. One case study was particularly instructive on the housing side, Bill Dunster's BowZED projects in Tower Hamlets.

RICS - right target, wrong message

I'm in two minds about the RICS announcement released today about energy performance certificates. I have the feeling they've shot themselves in the foot again after getting into a bit of mess over their stance on Home Information Packs earlier in the year. The underlying argument from the statement is clear and correct - EPCs are far from the only answer to addressing domestic energy use. But to highlight the research that is attached in such a dramatic way threatens to undermine the RICS's position.

Medium costs begin to make sense

While many of us are rightfully getting wound up about the zero-carbon definition for housing, there's some interesting figures in this month's Construction Manager that indicate that trying to get there right now is some way off. But they also offer some encouragement for taking some significant steps.

BRE under fire

I hear some concern voiced in the marketplace about the BRE from time to time. This is largely down to the fact that the former independent testing government-owned body is now a private outfit and very much in the marketplace with ambitious targets to double in size from a £40m to an £80m business. Perhaps it's just jealousy on the part of consultants losing out on big fee-paying jobs? Well, Ian Abley, an architect who runs a think-tank called Audacity, puts forward a case for concern more than just based on envy in this month's Construction Manager. Abley argues that we are expecting too much to have a growing business work a variety of complicated codes and legislation, or as he puts it: "An £80m business should not be built in partnership with government on the back of SAP chaos and code tinkering."

Carbon chaos and confusion

This week has been very confusing. Will there be an election next month or not? Who's going to play inside centre for England's rugby side on Saturday? Will the Government ever be able to offer an easy to understand, or to deliver, definition of zero carbon for housing? From the evidence of recent documents issued the answer to the third is not without a lot of effort and frustration. This leaves those in the unenviable position of trying to achieve the standard in future schemes but not having a clue as to how to achieve it.

Eco towns - what about the cities?

I'm sorry if this blogs keeps banging on about eco-towns but if this is the extent of the approach taken by Gordon Brown to sustainable development our Government is a mile away from grasping the issue. Why isn't he addressing cities first? After all, more than 50% of the global population lives in them now and this is set to rise to 75% by 2050, according to the United Nations. I look at where I live now, on the fringes of the City of London in Aldgate, as the perfect example of why Brown should look to major conurbations first before concocting wild plans of bolting on new towns across the UK.

New blogger in town

I'm glad to report that Nick Devlin, who runs his own sustainability consultancy, has now stepped into the blogoshpere (I hate that word). He's teamed up with one of the sectors best bloggers, Casey Cole, to become joint poster on Carbon Limited. And judging by his first post, on the Code for Sustainable Homes, Nick's got a lot of very interesting things to say.

Eco towns: so yesterday

Guest post by blogger Mark Brinkley

How cuddly is this? Gordon Brown has just promised us another five eco-towns. I don’t know about you, but something sticks in my craw when I hear announcements like this. New towns, whether eco or otherwise, are not things to be dispensed with, at the whim of a prime minister, as if he was tossing sweets out into a pantomime audience. Yes, I feel patronized and, what’s more, it’s a patently absurd way of running a supposedly sophisticated economy. Try substituting the word airport for the word town. And then putting the prefix eco in front of it, as in “I have decided we shall be having another five eco airports.” It just sounds barmy.

Eco towns - eco-bollocks?

I simply had to use an expression beloved of fellow blogger Mark Brinkley to describe one's initial reaction to Gordon Brown's proposal for an extra five eco-towns. How thought out is this beyond a easy-to-digest plan tossed out with precious little details? A comment by by Nick Devlin on the Building website encapsulates the worry about such announcements. And the aforementioned Mr Brinkley will be adding his scepticism about such plans on this site tomorrow in a guest slot. This will be the first of (hopefully) a new series of different voices on the blog site. If you fancy a crack at it yourself let me know.

Two tier market

David Orr, chief executive at the National Housing Federation, warned the Government on Friday that it would fail to meet its zero carbon housing target for 2016 as they are adopting a two tier approach to the programme. So while the public sector is compelled to meet minimum energy efficiency standards, private developers are not, Orr said at the Federation's annual conference. “Unless the Government compels the private sector to meet the same standards, and timetable, private companies will simply try to wriggle out of their environmental duties, saying it costs too much,” Orr said.

Open House does its bit

Open House is a good opportunity to get out and see some real examples of completed projects and to meet the people actually walking the walk. I managed to see three in south London, part of an eco-trail over the weekend organised by sustainable networking group Sponge. I took in two houses and a mixed use scheme(part office, part flats) and they showed that so-called "eco-buildings" can sit comfortably in the context of their surrounding neighbourhoods.

Hatfield fire