Built Environment Matters

Climate Resilience in UK Housing: Preventing Overheating in Net Zero Homes | The Bryden Wood Podcast

• Bryden Wood • Season 2 • Episode 6

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The UK's push toward net zero has dramatically improved building insulation and airtightness. But there's an unintended consequence that could prove dangerous: overheating. As climate change brings more extreme heat to Britain, these highly insulated homes risk becoming dangerously hot without adequate cooling strategies.

In this episode, co-founder Martin Wood explores climate resilience in residential design with Helen Hough and Pablo Gugel from our sustainability team. With Pablo's Spanish perspective on Mediterranean design principles, they examine how the UK can adapt its housing for a hotter future without resorting to energy-intensive air conditioning.

The conversation covers everything from cultural shifts in thermal comfort expectations to the massive challenge of retrofitting millions of existing homes. They explore whether government intervention is necessary given the scale of the problem, and question whether we're modeling future climate scenarios or simply ignoring the risks ahead.

A thought-provoking discussion about designing for the climate we're actually going to live in, not just the regulations we need to meet today.

Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction - The perfect storm facing UK housing 3:00 Mediterranean lessons: shading and cultural adaptation 8:00 Thermal comfort expectations vs climate reality 15:00 Retrofit priorities: walls, glazing, or energy supply? 25:00 The density problem: underoccupied housing 35:00 Government intervention vs individual responsibility



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Intro:

Welcome to the Bryden Wood Podcast. Bryden Wood is a global strategy and design consultancy. We are inventive thinkers, designers, engineers, and technical experts. We integrate creativity and deep experience to resolve complex challenges and realize a better world. Find us at Bryden Wood dot com.

Martin Wood:

Welcome to the Bryden Wood Podcast. Uh, we are here to talk about design for climate resilience. Uh, and I'm joined by Helen Hough and, and Pablo Gugel from, uh, our sustainability and building physics team. Um, the subject, uh, is very present, um, in, um, the media. Uh, I think people are aware of this subject, maybe not as, uh, designed for climate resilience because that's, um, kind of thing the likes of us would talk about, but the general public would talk about, uh, protests by people like Insulate Britain. Um, Just Stop Oil and they would, um, uh, see, uh, issues to do with. Tariffs and grants, uh, regarding the Green Deal and various failed, uh, initiatives by the government over the past, um, decades. And, uh, I guess we'd all wonder actually how we are gonna actually solve this problem. Um, and I guess one of the central things is we are going to discuss is if you were to spend a pound, in PA's case, a euro on, uh. Improving the housing stock, uh, the residential stock of a country, but more particularly the uk. What would you spend it on? Would you spend it centrally? Would you spend it on insulation? Would you spend it on the energy supply? Would you spend, spend it on um, heating devices, heat pumps? And also perhaps it's become very, uh, key issue is, um, how actually are we gonna keep buildings cool, particularly in the UK because it's quite clear 'cause of the climate change obviously caused by. Environmental change, which in turn comes from the poor housing stock to a degree. Um, what are we gonna do about that? Are we gonna allow, um, cooling in houses, air conditioning? Is that something that's gonna come common in Britain? Uh, and which is only gonna increase the amount of energy usage. So this is one of these circular arguments that we need to, uh, get some balance and some understanding of, and we were hoping we might just cast a bit of light on that today. So, um. There's a question for both of you really, perhaps Pablo, for yourself first, if you were gonna spend a pound on in the climate, uh, you are obviously, uh, based in Spain most of the time, Helen in the uk. Interesting to have the two perspectives here. What would you spend it on primarily and why?

Pablo Gugel:

I think in the subject of, uh, climate resilience, I think the one aspect that everyone understands, whether you're a specialist or, or, or not, a specialist in the, in the field. Is the weather. The weather and the climate considerations, the temperature, how you feel and overheating us at the moment a massive subject is, everyone is talking about it. In, in, in the industry. If you look at social media specialized or, or in the news, everyone has been talking about the last, uh, heat waves. It's a common subject, uh, every year. Uh, I think last over the last few years we've, we've had in the UK really long heat waves, and I think this was the year that got the, the record temperature in some areas in the south of, of, of the uk. So I think at the moment, over the last few years probably that penny has been spent, insulation, mainly has been always focusing the aspect of reducing energy, mostly related to heating because in residential buildings everything is about heating and domestic, uh, hot water. Um, energy, but now the conversation is shifting into cooling. So if I were to spend my penny in cooling, I think. Probably the aspect is prevention prevent, try to prevent that killing cooling, or that that's additional heat coming into, into the building. As you say, I live in Spain, I'm Spanish, and I know both the, the, the two typical languages. They have residential buildings in the UK and in a Mediterranean country like Spain. And there's a big difference. I think there's a cultural difference in that. So one of the things that you don't see. Mainly in residential buildings, a good shading strategy. Most residential buildings, particularly block blocks, they're quite flat. They have la uh, large windows because there's a need. I think it's also, maybe it's a cultural thing to have good daylight. Um, but in, in Spain, when you look at the landscape or the architectural languages, they are really generous balconies everywhere from site to side of the facade. But you have awnings or you have shatter. That's, that's the language because it's something that we've inherited from many years of vernacular architecture. So I think my painting would be in preventing the solar radiation. So the, the shading would probably be my, my first intervention. I know what you think, huh?

Helen Hough:

Yeah, I think it's a really good idea, but I also think there's an element of shifting sort of the culture of how people live, how they feel, whether they feel too hot, too cold. And there's a lot of people that would just whack the heating on as soon as they feel even a slightly chilly. And actually, we can do a lot with how we dress and what part of the house you are sort of living in, where you can heat one room rather than the whole house in winter and in summer, it's about. Blocking the sun coming in, as she's saying. But actually it's also about educating people that they will feel warmer in summer. They don't have, they shouldn't have an expectation that it will be as cool in their house as it is in winter, and they need to dress appropriately, but they also need to learn how to open the windows at the right time to prevent the hot air coming in. How they can use curtains to block some of that without making any. Without having to invest in anything new, no new shading, and they're making a small adjustment. And then maybe the next year they'll make a little bit more,

Martin Wood:

I think, I think we need to remember that, um, you know, the, the, the concept of thermal comfort is, uh. Uh, no, it's not really been, wasn't a thing, um, decades ago. Um, and, uh, it's, it's, it's grown and grown and grown, uh, in, uh, I guess most developed patients. But, um, central heating only really came in to, uh, uh, to the Falle in the 1970s in the uk. I guess it started in the late fifties, but really it was in the 1970s that most homes had central heating, and that's when we all sort of learned to be, um, you know, thermally. They expected, especially our house, to be warm all the way, all the way around the house all the time. Which is, uh, it's an expectation. It's a, it's a, it's a, an expectation that's grown and, and in hot climates, uh, in, in, um, developed countries. For example, in the USA, people might even expect that of cooling in the summer. So they expect their house to be entirely cool throughout. Um, and you know, one of the questions is, can we really solve all these problems with just, um. With technology, can we really, uh, putting more systems into our houses, more insulation into our houses, and spend this money, uh, for, uh, reducing. Returns because, uh, at some point we've just gotta realize that actually we, we are unable to control our environment as closely as we may, like we may have in the past if we are going to, um, reduce the energy usage of buildings. That's a question really, I suppose, as well as a statement. Um, uh, that's, I think some people think it's a failure to be unable to overcome those things, but I think. I think in some ways society will have to learn to live with slightly lower thermal comfort in disease, as we call it.

Pablo Gugel:

I think one, one one aspect of this, because thermal comfort is subjective. And it's not just the thermal comfort objective, it's what people like, the way that people like to deal with ther comfort. Some people, for example, are happy with in an air condition environment. I, for example, I hate air condition. I, it makes me feel sick. Some people would like to have a fun, some people would like to have a, the windows open. So because everyone, each individual has a different way to deal with it. What you need to provide is different measures, like an array of opportunities for people to, to choose. So, and, and those opportunities, they are. Shading again, which can have different forms. Natural ventilation is another opportunity. The other one is air movement that you can get through a fan or in the last resource. Ideally, uh, air conditioning. So if you have all those tools for you, at least you can choose the one that you like and get more psychologically comfortable. Comfortable as well. I,

Martin Wood:

I mean, this must be possible because of course, um, still in Scotland, air conditioning is pretty well non-existent, uh, in domestic properties at least because, you know, uh, peak temperatures in cities like Edinburgh, um, which is in obviously in the southern country, are still only 27, 28 degrees typically in the summer. Um, I think it's gone over 30 degrees once, but it's, but it's, but it's pretty uncommon compared to the kind of temperatures we're getting in southeast of, uh, Southeast of England. So, um, it's really a line across the country actually, because of the, because of the, the range of the, the, you know, it's quite a, it's quite a temperature range actually across the uk and it's a question of moving that line effectively. Can we contain the requirement for air conditioning only to the extreme southeast of Britain and not get that it grow this perception of the need for it and grow across the whole country by using things like shading and, and heat rejection measures on the outside of buildings, uh, or on the glazing of buildings to try and prevent heat buildup in first place, or increase natural ventilation because that's gotta be good for the country as a whole.

Helen Hough:

I think you totally can, but I also think you need to change the perception of what people expect.

Intro:

Yeah.

Helen Hough:

Um, but going back to the idea of different people, like different measures, even within a family, they're like different things. And even male, female, you have different perceptions of hot and cold. So,

Martin Wood:

so is this a public education thing?

Helen Hough:

I think there was an element of public education. An element of culture. Yeah. Educate people, but. There's a culture, you're never gonna completely change the culture. You can't swing it. So that we live really similar to Mediterranean. Um, sort of architectural feel. That's never gonna happen. But actually if we can take some of the elements,

Martin Wood:

it's a very interesting to help us un fashionable idea that because Yes. Yeah, I like, I like unfashionable ideas because, um, I'm probably the only one old enough here to remember public information films. So we used to have public information films on the TV that would instruct you to do various things, but health and safety and so on, thing that's completely disappeared. I think. I think, I think it's completely disappeared and I think most people would find it laughable. Now, the idea that government could. Could, um, could sort of educate the population through the use of television. Especially, you know, there's so few people actually watching the television, only streaming things these days. Um, but you know, it was a form of centralized control that did, did, did have an effect. It could actually, and it's a bit like that now. We like to, like to tell the public actually this is the way to deal with your house and summer. But you see some of the measures you could do, uh, to your house to prevent these problems in the first place. To some degree, even if it's a small degree, it's still quite effective because that's a, that's a zero expenditure thing apart from the, apart from the announcement itself.

Helen Hough:

But you're seeing it in the news already that. Yes, yes. You're seeing like, you go on your news app and there's, now this is what you can do to help your

Martin Wood:

well in, in this, in this period of influences. What we need is climate influencers who, who, who positively influence for people's, uh, thermal comfort and actually suggest just like, just like we have, um, you know, fitness tips, uh, almost a minute by minute basis coming through. Um, coming through newsfeeds and so on, we should actually perhaps have a bit more of a debate, uh, regarding how to generate, uh, better conditions in buildings for, for people.

Pablo Gugel:

But that, but that's, that's really important. I think that's, that can be really useful because we think that the most obvious things are known that most of the people, and that may not be truth. So for example, if you ask people in the uk if they should open the windows during the day. Or during the night, they might tell you, well, it's hot. I'm going to open the window. And that's completely wrong. In a heat wave when you have 30 degrees outside or 35 degrees, yeah, don't open the window and you need to keep your, your, your house. Cool. So the only way to deal with it, the first layer of defense is. Close the windows in the day. Eventually during the night in my, in my grandfather's, uh, house when I was a kid, they, they lived in a, in a, in an old house in, in a, in a region of Spain that reaches 40 degrees every single summer. So one of the things they would do is close the windows. I mean, my grandfather, if, if you would see you opening the window and they, he would go after you a lot. But the window, so not only that, they, they would have shutters, they would close everything. So the house would be beach black during the whole day, and then only in the evening you would open the windows and you would ventilate the house. That's the only way to deal with it. In some, some respect, this is really basic. Well,

Martin Wood:

in some respects that that, you know, there's people in the UK would think, oh, that sounds awful. We're gonna. Black out the house during the day. But of course, we're only talking about in the UK potentially having to do that for a few days a year. So this is a really small concession and those are days when it's very bright anyway, and you're probably gonna be outside for a period of the day. So it isn't such a radical proposition as it might sound when you first say it, but you know, um, again, typical, uh, the climate you were talking about. Um, so there's definitely a lot some learning. Can I, can I. Sort of move this around a bit from the cultural aspect, because clearly the cultural difference is clearly there are things that people in the UK can learn from different cultures. Tolerance is one of them. Thermal tolerance I think in the first place. Um, but also just tips on, um, making our houses cooler. But one of the questions is, should we look a bit more centrally to these things? Because I have to say the. Um, we've been talking a lot about, uh, keeping houses cool, but, but actually we know that most of the energy is expended a much higher percentage of the, um, energy. Even if cool, exist in houses, much higher. Use of energy is heating of houses in the winter. We obviously want to insulate for that. And of course the very easy, uh, uh, um, insulation of houses was, has long since been done, which is not maybe, maybe effectively everywhere, but which is the use of, um, loose layer loft insulation. Initiative that I think came in in the seventies, again, ran through the eighties and pretty well haul houses have loft insulation and that was very simple to put in because it didn't change the um, uh, it didn't change any of the functional aspects of your house at all. Unlike insulating the walls of the apps, which have to be, has to be applied to the, well, if it's not cavity fill insulation, which had its own problems. People remember this in history because of. Some of the water ingress issues that came from, uh, cavity fill insulation. But if it's not cavity fill insulation, then it's applied to the inside wall of a house or to the outside face of a house, which has, it's a myriad of problems that come from doing that. And, um, also, maybe you could talk to the fact that. Uh, this is really what we're talking about here is the, is, um, modifications to existing building stock because one of the things we see is we see lots of initiatives and lots of regulations about new buildings, but the problem is that's still a very small percentage of the overall housing stock. Therefore, if we're really to have any effect on this in, um, in the short term then, or even the medium term for that matter, uh, then we have to consider mainly the existing adages in stock. Um, so yes, I think it's difficult for us to e either of any of three of us here to argue with some of the, um, moves towards higher insulation levels in new buildings. Although that does grow its own and overheating problems and, um, you know, and, and, and the move, for example, to heat pumps away from. From gas boilers. These are all very sensible moves in many respects, and the inclusion of, for example, MBHR, heat recovery Systems in houses all great. But what about the existing housing stock? How do you best go about upgrading the insulation levels of existing buildings? Is it tending to the glazing? Is it intended to the walls? Is it intended to the roof? You can't really do much about slab in existing buildings, so. Installation of MVHR to, to improve the, uh, the control of, um, air leakage from a building. What are, do we think the best measures? If you spend a pound again, what would you get the greatest benefit from?

Helen Hough:

Well, I think you need to insha the walls. I think a lot of houses have already gone from the single glazing to the double glazing. Yes, that is obviously a great thing, but there's not. A lot of houses have already done that measure. That's a bit easier. Um, insulating internally is great from an architectural perspective. When you walk down the street, your house still looks the same, but installing insulation internally and cause condensation, so lots of ventilation needed. Do you wanna do that in winter when you're bringing in the really cold air? That's gonna cause other issues with people feeling too cold. Um, so then you think, well, should we be doing that? Should we be installing our installation externally where it's easier to control that condensation? Both have issues, don't they? In terms of installation? How do you go about it? How much chaos do you causing to your house, your neighbors? The scaffold, you might need to put up the cost of it, but at the end of the day, you'd end up with lower heating bills. And that's an ongoing year on year saving that you are gonna get as that

Martin Wood:

person living in that. I guess the real problem is that, that the, the, some of the, uh, the capital cost of some of these installations around the tens of thousands. Yeah. Um. Very complex in certain instances because obviously if you put insulation on the inside of your walls, it's interrupted by floors and internal part walls and partitions. Those are potential thermal breaks that are condensation concerns. Uh, there is all the concerns about workmanship and getting people getting, uh, reliable contractors to do this work in the first place. You know, there's a myriad of problems with this. Would this money better be spent in some way, for example, um, would it be better? Um. Uh, spent on decarbonizing the energy supply in the first place. So, effectively is just a question, is, you know, use more energy but generate that energy in, uh, zero carbon. So from, from solar panels or from additional wind generation or nuclear power, potentially. Uh, obviously done as a mix to get that kind of, um, blended grid that we all need to because of, um, clearly the, the cycle of, um. Power from solar and wind needs to be balanced with nuclear and so on, but whatever that's investing in the central energy infrastructure and although it's very expensive and famously expensive, infrastructure spending, we're talking about millions of properties. We're talking about upgrading millions of properties in Britain, what is the best use of that money? Is it in upgrading those properties, or is it in fact in diverting some of that money at least to the improvement of central energy infrastructure? Decarbonization.

Pablo Gugel:

But I think that the problem of that approach is that. We need to think about the operational cost of, of this bill. So if you decarbonize the grid, and that means that the way to tackle these problems is to have, um, an electric boiler and air condition that that is electric or a heat pump. If you have a really inefficient envelope, you put your heat pump and the energy bills would go over the roof. That's something that may be so many people are talking about heat pumps, and I've heard stories of people who invest in a heat pump. Without having addressed the envelope before, and then it's so expensive that it becomes a different problem. And I think it's particularly problem because now, and there's a lot of people who live in, in energy poverty who cannot pay their their bills. So I think that the, the first approach, at least in my perspective, would be to try to reduce the bills, which means try not to use the, the energy. I think the problem to that is what you were saying before, just in any way. You always need to invest some money before there's a capital cost associated to that who can spend 20,000 pounds, 10,000 pounds in upgrading the envelope by having installation or by changing the windows. It's a problem is, is the government going to pay for that? Are expecting people to, to, to go to the bank and borrow some 20,000 pounds, how to solve that. But the problem is that. The other problem is that is a problem of perspective. I don't think we, we need to look at a much bigger issue. It is not about trying to reduce the, the energy bills a little bit. As the government, they have committed to be net zero by 2050. You can, you are not going to be net zero by 2050 by just adding installation or just by replacing the windows. You need to be much more ambitious. So the lead team. Um, the organism, they organi, they developed this publication on refurbishing and they said that the only way to make that all the resident existing reside in residential building to become net zero is to raise it to the standard of passive house. Passive house for people don't know. What it is, is a very ambitious, energy efficient, uh, scheme that looks into insulation, air tightness, windows, heat recovery, basically the best of the best at every level. That's the only way to be net zero by 2050. So the, the level of ambitious is huge.

Martin Wood:

I mean, it, it, it's, it's a sort of, um, uh, brings it into perspective because, um, I mean, for people that don't know, the, the, the idea of passive has being achieved in, uh, 5%, 10% of the UK housing stock is almost. It's almost very hard to, to, to imagine or believe. You have to have incredibly low air change rates. You have to have, um, an MVHR system ready to get heat recovery and necessary ventilation. You need, um, very insulation that would be amazing to most people. Kind of 300 millimeter thick insulation to walls and roofs and so on. It, it's something that's gonna be extremely difficult to, I I mean, I'm actually gonna, I'm actually gonna, uh, pose another question, which is slightly more radical. A, uh, societal question, which is, you know, the density of people per cubic meter of housing is an interesting concept, which is, I could put more simply for people as house blocking. So old people, you end up with two people living in a large house for, you know, 3, 4, 5 bedrooms. Often they've had a family and, uh, the family have moved out as they do. They retain the building and so on. And actually what we actually have is we, we do, if you looked at the actual fundamental efficiency, particularly in the uk, I suspect culturally this is potentially a bigger problem in the UK than it is in other countries. No, I'm going to, why I suspect that at the moment, but I do, and you have sometimes two people living in a house with maybe, uh, 8, 9, 10 rooms, 11 rooms. You know, and, and sometimes quite big with it, and clearly that's highly inefficient, fundamentally across the whole country. That's a highly inefficient way of keeping people. Um, in a comfortable internal environment, what you would do is you give people a much more even and reasonable, and that all sounds like something you couldn't possibly control. But, but I think there's been a lot of talk, this is another subject that's come up in the press a lot. There's been a lot of talk about, um, uh, you know, older people relinquishing their houses to the housing market 'cause of the pressure on housing and otherwise we don't. Get that to happen more frequently where people start to move into the appropriate size properties, then we will just keep needing to build new properties. And we've all seen in the news constantly the drive for extra housing. Now the question is, is it that we've got a terrible house housing shortage in Britain, or is it that we actually don't deploy our housing relative to the population numbers as effectively as we can now? How on earth you exactly manipulate that. I don't know. But it is a fundamental thing. You can't completely ignore any thoughts on that. Uh, social intervention, radical social intervention, but you know, it's a fact that in the UK it's just not well distributed.

Pablo Gugel:

And it's also the typology in general. I think in the UK more people like living in houses. In other countries you would see many more blocks of houses and people sure don't have any, we're getting

Martin Wood:

used to it. In the major cities in Britain these days, there are a lot more different rise blocks, but But are you absolutely right

Pablo Gugel:

And floods are much more energy efficient. Yeah. Than houses. And so I think in the, the, the UK comes from many different angles. As the, the climate is changing, the typology is not the right one, the density is not the right one. The UK is the perfect storm. It's the perfect storm. Needs to be. Well, that's another way of,

Martin Wood:

no, but I mean obviously that's why, you know, one of the things is that it, it's, it's, it's sometimes difficult actually for the UK population to see the absurdity. Of, um, their housing stock without getting an, uh, you know, an external perspective on it, which yours is a Spanish perspective today, but there are other perspectives. I'm sure some, um, you know, Icelandic perspectives or whatever subject might be interesting, but it, there is something of a perfect storm about the UK housing stock. Um, it's, it's, it's inefficient in. Multi, it's got a multi-dimensions of inefficiency coming together to create, uh, to create a problem that I, that I think it can't be intractable, but we have to, we have to be imaginative about how we solve.

Helen Hough:

I guess You encourage downsizing, which is effectively what we're saying. Mm. Actually that house has just got the next family moving into it. That house is still the same building fabric that it was with the previous family. Still got the same issues around heating keeping coming summer.

Martin Wood:

It does, but it does prevent the building more houses, albeit those houses would be on new, regular, new regulation. But

Helen Hough:

you still got, yeah,

Martin Wood:

you still have the upgrade of it. Yeah, I still have the upgrading issue. Um, and, but, but actually one of the points there is, I mean, you know, is, is, um. The mo, I mean, the, the problem is that the, the, the, the, the new housing stock is just so much more efficient than the existing housing stock. It almost becomes an irrelevancy. It's like, it's like not, not even if, even if the regulations, I have a problem with the, the, what am I call the inflation in regulations because it's a bit like, because the government, it's a lever they can pull readily, they can change the standard of the building regulations. And do you mean. Both you guys have, this is your business, so you are going to sort of, generally speaking, condone this move towards passive house standards. I can't, I don't wanna detract from that, but I wanna ask the question, should we really be, because there's some significant, uh, increases in costs. By, by implementing new regulations that, that, that people have to bear, that means that gets potentially a lower quantity of new housing 'cause people simply can't afford it. The economics of development don't work. If you put too many regulations in place that increase the costs by, you know, significant percentage points, then the people won't develop. And therefore that, and we're seeing that at the moment, there isn't actually some concerns that the house building, boom. We perceive we require, not withstanding the comments we made earlier about better fitting the population to the, to the housing stock. Um, it's, it, it's, you know, it, it, it, well, not withstanding that, I don't know that we can, um, uh, we can really. If we, we can really afford to do this, perhaps. Actually we shouldn't, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be, uh, inflating regulations as, as, as quickly as we are. And we should be looking to the retrofitting of the 80%, 90% of the, of the, of the housing stock, which is pre, uh, which has, which was, was done on, built under regulations that frankly didn't consider climate change as a big issue.

Pablo Gugel:

I think the focus should be clearly, if you want to tackle the, the, the problem at the big scale, it should be refurbishment because of what we said before is the biggest proportion of, of the residential.

Martin Wood:

How do we finance that? I mean, how do we motivate people? How do we Well, that's what I, I mean, that's what I mean, right? How do we motivate people? How do we, how do we make that happen? What levers would you imagine anybody? Government per, per what? What would be the things that have incentivize people to do that? I'm just, I I'm begging that question because I agree with you. I agree with you, but I have no idea how to, um, to stimulate.

Helen Hough:

It's difficult, isn't it?'cause the government's already tried things like the green deal where you can have a grant and you'll pay it back via your lower bills. But it didn't work. Not many people took it up. Not many people were trained as installers under that scheme, and it kind of fell a bit flat. So,

Martin Wood:

but we see, we see financial incentivization, for example, for electric cars. Should we be incentivizing electric cars over incentivizing? Um, I mean. There are millions of ways you could incentivize, um, uh, decarbonization, but, you know, perhaps actually it's a neglect, you know, refurbishment and upgrading of buildings, perhaps a neglected one. It's not very exciting. It's not exciting for a population compared to, for example, um, encouraging builders who adopt electric cars, but, but

Helen Hough:

not being, there are incentives to get rid of your gas boiler and replace it with a heat pump. You can only do that if you've done certain upgrades to your house already in terms of maybe insulating or the glazing, that kind of thing, which is good. That's

Martin Wood:

a very good point.

Helen Hough:

But actually, not everyone wants a heat pump right now, but some people would actually like to keep their boiler because it's working. It's good. But they'd like the. The incentive for those fabric upgrades. And that's not around,

Martin Wood:

but you make a very good point, which is you don't really want most, an awful lot of, uh, uh, housing sock. You don't want to put heat pump in with the, uh, with the fabric performance of a current building because it doesn't work very because it, because, because, you know, we all know that. So heat pump, if it's gonna be efficient, isn't raising the temperature of the water beyond about 40, 50 degrees. Not, no, you won't, not 70, 80 degrees that you would've. Got outta your boiler in the first place. So all of your radiant surface, all your radiators aren't big enough. So if you are gonna overcome that, you've either gotta, you've either gotta change those or you've got to insulate in the first place so you just don't need as much heat in the room so you can run your radiators, these reduced temperatures, for example. So it it, this is a big problem in the sense that, you know, introduction of heat pumps is only going to apply to a certain percentage of the housing stock. Quite frankly, the rest of the housing stock is gonna be, it's gonna be, um, uncomfortable with heat pump because it's going to not be able to deliver the same, uh, same levels of heating in value.

Pablo Gugel:

I, I think the analogy you made with the cars is really good. There's a reason why people buy electric cars, and I think a per small percentage of the reason will be people who are committed to sustainability or climate change. I think most of the users of an electric car will be just because they need to go to the city center and they want an electric car that enables them to go to the city center in those areas, which are with their restrict restrictions, like in London, for example. So in the uk. In residential buildings, if you want to do the same thing, try to motivate people to go electric or to go to better systems for insulate their house because they need to save the planet. Probably a really tiny percentage of people do it because of the reason. So the only way to do it is by restricting. And how do you restrict saying by the end of their life cycle of your own boiler, you don't have a choice. You have to go electric. That's one way of doing it. Similar, like in like with the cars, you don't have a choice if you want to use your car in the city center. Well, it has to be electric.

Martin Wood:

In that case, I go back to the, um, the, the, the, um, concept of public information films, which can see great returning. But, uh, people need to realize that actually if this is the case and we are actually gonna just phase out, uh, what we, we will be phasing out, uh, gas heating, then they need to start preparing soon. Because, um, it's not one of those things they, they're gonna get an, they'll get an almighty shock if they actually have to change the heat pump. And a house is completely inadequate for it because they will not only require, or not only a need to upgrade their house, but they'll have to install the heat pump simultaneously. So that'll be a, a very big part. It'd be better if there was an upgrading house in the meantime, which would reduce their bills. Yeah. And then, uh, it would make it suitable for the introduction of the heat pump. At the point when, uh, when the sale of gas boilers becomes, uh, no longer, well illegal effectively. Um, so, you know, this is a, a thing that I, that's, that's, to us that is fairly simple and fairly obvious. But is it, is it simple and obvious to the population that their house is not fit, is effectively not fit for purpose? Because when it becomes a house that's. Unhealable by, uh, from, uh, natural gas. You know, what will they do? It, it, it, I think, um, I think that's a, it's a piece of, it's a piece of information that's really not coming across. And I think we go back to one of these things is how, how is this gonna be able to, how do we get this quite com fairly complex conversation about. The best thing to do to your property to improve its performance, which is, which is quite complex.'cause it's variable depending on the property. But in a way it's an apartment. This, this is heating and cool and stopping overheating, I won't call it cooling, but stopping overheating. Um, it, it varies. It varies. Your, your most efficient route to an improved, uh, performing properties. It's, you know, slightly different depending on where it is, what it is, whether it's a house, whether it's a flat, and so on. And, and, and I just don't know how people are, how, how people are gonna, there needs to be more access to more knowledge and more information about the subjects. People need to be helped with this. I mean, one of the things is that maybe there needs to be schemes where, um, uh, people are given slightly more targeted, more specific information about how to upgrade their house rather than these very generalist things that come out. By some method, maybe there's a, maybe there's a, uh, an organization set up by the government that gives people, um, better understanding of cost effective, uh, measures they can take on their property.

Pablo Gugel:

This one angle that we didn't touch, that is the cultural perspective of developers, and I think this is related to new construction. I know this is smaller in proportion to today, but I think. There's a bit of, there's a bit of a misunderstanding because there's a perception that building regulations goes overheating in, in new construction, and it is an, it isn't. So the addition of insulation reduces the heat loss through the, through the, the reduces the heat loss and the heat gain through through the walls, but. Cause ever heating is again, the lack of, of solar, um, uh, protection. But this types up with other levels of complexity. One of them is safety. That seems to be a problem, uh, for many developers, and developers at the moment do not want to have openable windows because they want, they don't want people falling. I mean, they don't want to have the accident in the, in the reputation. And that's causing lots of restrictions in, in the design of residential billings. That added to the cultural thing of not having a different insulation is making the problem of overheat. Of overheating. Everyone's saying this is the billing regulations that is causing overheating. No, it's not the, it is not the insulation part of the billing regulations. It's the, everything related to that is the not being able to natural ventilate, not being able to, to put external shelling in, in buildings. All of that combined is, is causing the problem. And I think that's something that requires a bit of thinking at the same time. So,

Martin Wood:

so one of the things I, I, I guess I feel, um, we should come to some sort of, um, not, not a conclusion, but at least some, uh, unified thoughts on is how much of do we think this, um, the. In the improvement of the housing stock, um, as we said in the title, the climate resilience of the housing stock, how much do we think this is going to be imposed upon people? And how much do, do we think people are gonna be? Is this gonna be self-generated? And if it's gonna be self-generated, how is the, I mean, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen easily. So is it, do we have to encourage, uh, an increased level of thought and consideration of this by the general public? I mean, what is the mechanism? Is it, so, is it centralized government or is it devolved? Is it, is it, is it is, is it, does it, do we grow it from the, from, from the, uh, desire of the general population to lower their bills, improve their thermal comfort, save the planet. Or is it something that we've quite frankly just don't have the time and we have to impose, uh, from on high by taking more draconian measures, like eliminating certain traditional heating types and so on and, and, and legislating. What do we think about that?

Helen Hough:

I think there's a very small proportion of people that would do it all off the own back.

Martin Wood:

Well, so you are so, you are, you are for central legislation.

Helen Hough:

I don't necessarily think that's the way that it should go, but I think. People aren't motivated enough

Martin Wood:

how Draconian should

Pablo Gugel:

do. Absolutely. Absolutely. They're, and I'm only saying this because the scale of the problem is way bigger than just talking about overheating. Thermal comfort is what I said before about the 2050 commitment to net zero. That commitment is only achievable if you do something really ambitious. So if the government, for example, is talking at the moment there, I think there was recent news about the. Bringing nuclear back or building nuclear power. Power, which is an amazing investment for any, for any government. That's the level of investment they, that they need to bring or consider. If they really want to go for 2015 at zero people is not going to be investing enough money individually in all the houses to be able to be able to meet that target. So I think it's the government who needs to come with an agenda. I don't, I don't know. Sometimes it feels like, be like, well it's the government's problem. They deal with it, but realistically, who can resolve the problem? We were talking about a combination of factors in the UK is the, is the climate, is the culture we talking about.

Martin Wood:

Perfect storm.

Pablo Gugel:

It's the perfect storm. That perfect storm. You need a perfect, so not a perfect song. Perfect. I'm really ambitious strategy to it. So

Martin Wood:

you, I mean I, I often think at the moment there's been a sort of. I don't know. There's been an inflation in people's per uh, uh, uh, expectations of what a government can do for them. Well, that's, and quite frankly, I, I just don't think this is something where, uh, governmental, uh, central control is gonna do it. And, and I think there just needs to be somehow, there needs to be a growth in public perception of how much responsibility each individual takes. So what, for this problem, people just not. Understanding the trade off. So for example, if I pose the trade off of, um, if you improve the, uh, uh, if you've improved your, the quality of your housing stock, um, then it would, um, justify your ability to still fly on holiday for a longer period of time. People don't make that trade off between the, the, the, the, the energy use and. The, the carbon impact of flight, for example, transportation versus their house. They just don't, they don't understand the proportionality of those things. Um, and therefore, they're not asked to, they're not asked to be responsible. They're not given, they're not given the tools to be climate responsible. That's one of the things that I, I would say is that, and if, and if, I think if they were, they'd realize their housing stock was one of the significant. It, it is what, it's one of the largest contributors, uh, to climate change. And that's something that they actually, as a population could do something about.

Pablo Gugel:

I think there's a lot of information out there explaining what you need to do or what is your responsibility about climate change. But taking responsibility means that changing your style of lifestyle and that change that affects your, your pockets. So you need to, to be,

Martin Wood:

but, but, but the, but the trouble, the, the, the problem with individual responsibility is that, you know, it's, it's always someone else's then, isn't it? It's always someone else's responsibility. Yeah. Which is really based your thing, Helen. I'm saying It's gotta be done and uh, uh, at a government central level to, to quite a high degree. And I. I'm, I'm struggling to disagree with that. You know, I, I, I'd, we'd all kind of like that not to be the case. I think that's why, why would we ever want to, to, to be, you know, to, to people, to draconian measures the force population when we wants to relatively be a libertarian. But it's hard to see given the pace. It's the, it's the speed. For me, it's the speed. If this was something that could, that we knew was an issue and we knew. We had centuries to solve then, then, then a, a gentle progression towards the improvement of housing stock will be one thing, but this is something we have to transform in within, within a decade. Within within two decades. And that's a nominal amount of effort and will will not happen just by changing public perception.

Helen Hough:

I think it's the speed, but it's also that capital cost. It's not many that people have got sat around in their bank ready to. To spend on their house.

Martin Wood:

Oh, probably. Well, well indeed. Um, so, but, so makes a huge

Helen Hough:

difference to people.

Martin Wood:

Well, that's, yeah. But so, so the, but, so the question therefore, is how, how it's, it's knowing which measures to take, which by reduction in your heating bills is, in other words, payback period. So, so, so basically if things have short payback periods, five years. Loft insulation, as we said earlier, easiest one payback period was a year or something like that because you've got a loose layer of loft insulation. You could put it in yourself. It didn't cost very much. It came from a local DIY store and, uh, and it, and it, it saved quite a bit of energy 'cause it was in the right place in the building. Therefore. It paid itself back in no time. Flat. Okay. That was the easy winds have gone, but what is the next one? And what is the next one? Is the next one. And how do people get the information? This is where you say there's a lot of information out there, Pablo. Mm-hmm. But crafting it to your own specific property or problem is another matter. So saying My house would benefit better from. Um, reducing the air leakage rate, for example, 'cause a particular type of window and glazing, which is like a sash window, for example, which is particularly bad from a linkage point of view. That might be better benefit than insulating the walls initially. But the next thing would be insulating the walls and then it would be insulating something else and so on. And I do it with, you know, how much insulation would I put 50 millimeters of insulation? Would I put 200 millimeters of insulation? Would I use a, um, non-combustible insulation? Could I use a combustible insulation? Not. For obvious reasons, not a great idea, but they still exist, uh, for use in certain locations. What do people, you know, how do people get that, uh, even if they wanted to do it? How are we going to give them the tools to, uh, increase their understanding and also protect them against things like, for example, sprayed insulation in roof. Which we've seen again in the news. These are things that are constantly in the news. Um, they caused, um, uh, people to be able to not get mortgage on houses and completely devalue properties. This is the uk again, I don't think these existed in Spain, but, and that was one of the, you know, a number of different, uh, commercial initiatives, which were quite frankly. Poorly conceived or technically inadequate. And again, the government needs to be, somebody needs to be advising government and giving a quality of central information that causes those things not to happen in the future. Any more thoughts on this? This, uh, this pretty, pretty, I mean, you know, we can't not, we can't, we can't do nothing. And, and, uh, to be honest. We, as we said earlier, the UK has one. I mean, I'm sure there are other nations, but UK does have a bigger problem than many other countries. It has a housing stock that's, it's, it's, it's poor. It has a poor, uh, density population within that housing stock. It's got building types that aren't natural, naturally efficient in the first place, and it has a climate which has the audacity to be cold and hot now. Mm-hmm. It was only cold once. Now it's cold and hot. Hot and it's wet. Um, uh, and we won't even get onto the subjects of flooding and, um, and, and of, uh, for, for water scarcity in certain regions. Um, those are other subjects, interrelated subjects, uh, that, uh, create a great deal of, um, uh, uh, problems for people and, uh, very much again in the media. Maybe we'll talk about'em some other time. But, um, so we're basically, we are for, we're for decisive government action.

Pablo Gugel:

Yes, an individual responsibility, an individual,

Martin Wood:

an increase in individual responsibility, which we generate by a method we haven't quite determined. Um, and, uh, we're, well, I think for me, one of the things that's come out of this is actually, I, I think that, uh, knowledge. Giving people knowledge that they don't have. I think there's a lot of knowledge. People don't have, they don't have the knowledge about quite how bad things are. They don't have the knowledge about, uh, how they need to do a whole series of steps in order to improve that. It's like not just one thing. People are looking, always looking for the panacea. They're always looking for, I put a heat pump in and everything's great, but it's not. It's, it's a suite of things they need to do across their property. And I think people's understanding and education need to be, uh, understanding that needs to be raised quite dramatically. And I think in doing so, I think people will, I'll encourage, uh, I think that that will encourage personal responsibilities to some degree because greater understanding always increases people's, um, it gets them thinking. And, and then when they get 'em thinking, they tend, they tend to increase their personal responsibility.

Pablo Gugel:

And, and I think there's another responsibility. There is responsibility of companies like us to, we have the information, right. So, yeah. Information. Why did you tell

Martin Wood:

them

Pablo Gugel:

Pablo? Yeah, so I mean, explain, to tell us this podcast can, can, uh, clear some ideas. So

Martin Wood:

I, I listen. I think the cultural, I think the cultural perspectives are really useful. Uh, and I think there's, uh, I think there are definitely things to do with the overheating that we are not mimicking from the continent, uh, that we should be and, and actually somewhat easier to implement than the, than the, than the thermal installation that's free. Say

Helen Hough:

you shouldn't forget the small steps. They're still important.

Martin Wood:

Yeah. It, it's a debate. No, no single person knows the answer to this question, but, um, and, and quite frankly, we didn't touch on all of the areas, um, uh, this as this subject deserves, but, um, I think, uh, for today, that's about as many, um, as, as, as far as we can go in terms of, um, increasing, uh, uh, increasing public awareness at least of what they should do.

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