Roger Hunt - Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability

Kevin McCloud, author, broadcaster and designer.

There are some 26 million homes in Britain, most of them as well insulated as a rabbit hutch, most of which will still be in existence in 2050. Half a million of them are listed; countless numbers sit in conservation areas and, very roughly, one fifth of our dwellings were built before 1919.

Collectively, the buildings we live in are responsible for more or less 26 per cent of Britains carbon emissions. Now, you may be among the dwindling number of people who believe that increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have got nothing to do with human activity and that we can do nothing about that. You may cry humbug to the Greens among us and eschew words such as sustainability and eco as mere baubles of conversational fashion. But I doubt that, because youve already picked this book up.

In any case, it doesnt require a lifetime membership of Greenpeace to appreciate that the planets resources are finite, that the world population is growing beyond sustainable levels and that our homes gobble energy to keep us warm and fed. Generally speaking, the older and larger our homes are, the more energy they consume. Any owner of an historic home will be sensitised to the cost of this and to the volatility of energy markets just by reading their electricity, gas or oil bills. Indeed, some of the nations more august historic homeowners have responded over the past ten years by investing in low-carbon and independent technologies such as solar photovoltaic and biomass boilers to reduce the sheer cost of heating and maintaining their properties.

The rest of us shiver at the capital cost of a wood-pellet boiler with auger-feed and ash-compacter and just don another pullover. So three green cheers for this book, which mixes an erudite analysis of the latest building science with practical advice and demonstrations of best practice. It behoves any proud carer of an old home to arm themselves with an outline understanding of dewpoints, interstitial condensation and U-values, and do not fret, dear Reader these are all admirably and sometimes even entertainingly explained and illustrated here. More hurrahs! Moreover, they are helpfully framed in the context of what is good conservation practice, of the need for reversibility and for the retention of our buildings narratives. These ideas are part of the bedrock of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, this books co-publisher.