Refurb for the masses

The only thing visibly special about the house I am visiting in Islington, north London, is that Arsenal’s stadium towers at the end of the road. For football fans, this would be a good spot to hear the roar of the crowd every other Saturday. For anyone else, it might be a bit of a nightmare.

However, the sound proofing on the ground floor flat of this house has just got a little bit better, with state-of-the-art vacuum sealed windows and quality insulation cutting out some of the roar of the fans. 70a Aubert Road has had an eco-makeover and better insulation was top of the list.

For social housing contractor United House, the flat is the first step towards becoming expert in eco-refurbishment. It decided to take an ordinary Victorian house in Islington undergoing decent homes work and take it to the next stage: a green overhaul.

Projects like this are springing up all over the country but Alistair Sivill, the technical director at United House working on the project, claims this one is different. ‘Others have thrown money and bling at it but we want to become the Henry Ford of this, doing it for sensible prices,’ he explains.

So if United House can mass-produce green refurbishments the way that Mr Ford produced millions of cars, how will it go about making it affordable?

There is a chart pinned up in the living room showing the measures that give the greatest savings of carbon dioxide for the cheapest price. Top of the list is low-energy lighting, while a heat-recovery system that recycles waste heat loiters at the bottom. ‘We’ll work our way down the list to get to the budget total,’ says Mr Sivill.

The idea is that a social landlord with a set pot of money will be able to get the most bang for its buck if it refurbishes its whole stock. Such a project would aim to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from houses as much as possible, but not all homes would get the same treatment - only the changes that are most cost-effective. The cash would go where it can achieve the largest carbon dioxide reduction per pound spent.

The conclusion drawn from this flat, which is on the bottom floor of a Victorian conversion, is that a 50 per cent cut is easy to achieve, a 70 per cent cut is quite costly and an 80 per cent cut unfeasibly expensive. Given that the government has pledged to slash carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, that sounds like bad news. But Mr Sivill’s view is that cost-effective action now is more important than aiming for an impossible target: ‘It’s 2010, 2012, 2014 that matters - not 2050.’

What’s more, the team at United House stacked the odds against themselves. ‘We chose a property that is hard to heat - this is as difficult as it gets to improve,’ says Mr Savill. The company’s next challenge will be even tougher: in the coming months, hard-to-treat units will be retrofitted with tenants already in place.

Walls

Solid walls have been insulated with just under 30mm of Aerogel with an air gap. The floor has been sealed with 150mm of Warmcell insulation. The airtight breathable membrane has been brought up above the skirting board to avoid heat loss.

‘Magic wallpaper’, which has insulating properties, has been put in the hall, because it must not be made any narrower. There is no benefit to the flat itself in treating the ceiling or party walls because the next door and upstairs properties benefit from carbon savings.

Windows

The wooden sash windows are being kept, but the glass has been replaced with Japanese-made vacuum glazing with a 20mm gap between the double sheets of glass.

Brushes to exclude draughts have been added to the windows of the front of the property. These work better than the mastic tried on the ones at the back.

Water

There is a 100-litre rainwater tank in the bathroom, with mains back-up. However, as Mr Sivill points out, if rainwater harvesting becomes popular then the leaseholder upstairs will get to it first. The bath is average size and, surprisingly, there is no shower - the work on the fixtures and fittings is only the standard for decent homes.

Energy

The flat has a micro-combined heat and power unit in the form of its Baxi boiler, which is fuelled by gas and generates both heat and electricity. This boiler is part of a field trial, one of 80 such boilers in the UK, and will be launched at the end of the year. Mr Sivill thinks that if there was a feed-in tariff it would generate at least £100 per year for the tenant.

Air tightness

Tests revealed that the flat measured 9 on the air pressure rating compared with a legal maximum of 10 for building regulations. The team was aiming for a low 5 but managed to get 7. The real results, however, will only be as eco-friendly as the tenants living there, so United House has come up with guidance to help tenants live greener.

Skills

The building team got a ‘toolbox talk’ before work started, to explain the theories behind the eco-refit. They learned that they needed to change their way of thinking because air-tightness has to be considered at all times, so patching up problems is no longer an option. ‘It is an attitude change and won’t be easy,’ says Mr Savill.

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