Retro living
How easy is it to get tenants to adapt their lifestyle to a retrofitted home? Sustainable Housing is following a family over the next two years to find out. Nick Duxbury reports
It is almost becoming a cliché. How many times have you heard sustainability bods say: ‘It’s all very well carrying out expensive retrofits, but it’s a waste of money if the tenant just leaves the window open…’? Annoying it may be, but this is a reality of retrofitting social homes. Tenant behaviour is, ultimately, what will determine whether or not landlords achieve energy savings in retrofitted homes.
With this in mind, Sustainable Housing has teamed up with Apollo Group, architects Levitt Bernstein and Greenwich Council to follow the journey of a family living in a retrofit house in Wolf Crescent in south east London’s Charlton. We will feature blogs and updates about how they are adapting their lives and what practical problems they encounter over the next two years as the house is monitored by the Energy Saving Trust.
The 1920s semi-detached, solid-walled property has been overhauled as part of the Technology Strategy Board’s retrofit for the future programme. It cost £130,250 to refurbish to Passivhaus principles - meaning it is highly insulated and very airtight. It is hoped the property will achieve carbon savings of 80 per cent and energy savings of 86 per cent - but whether or not it actually does will depend on its tenants.
Instead of simply taking the first family off the housing waiting list, Greenwich is about to advertise for tenants who have an interest in greener living and are prepared to commit to the feedback process. Irene Craik, director at Levitt Bernstein, explains why: ‘We don’t really want to end up with a family of smokers that keep the doors and windows open all the time or have big TVs and electrical appliances.’
Case study: a family’s view of life in a Passivhaus
Octavia Housing won the accolade of having the UK’s first certified Passivhaus retrofit scheme in March at its 100 Princedale Road Victorian terraced house in west London.
The 4,000-home association achieved an 83 per cent cut in carbon emissions from the house and predicts a saving of £917 a year in fuel bills. Not including consultancy fees, the cost of works, which completed in November, was £178,290.
Tenant Bouchra Bakali, 36, her sons Mouad, 16, and Othman, five, and daughter Siriyn, 11, have been living in the Holland Park property for more than a month now but are yet to see a bill to determine whether or not they are on track for the predicted savings. Sustainable Housing paid them a visit to ask
‘I haven’t had to adapt my life yet. But you do have to change the way you think about things a bit. As long as you are open-minded then you can find a way round most problems. When I wanted to sort out a Sky package for the house, the installation man came round and wanted to drill a hole through the wall. He didn’t believe me when I said that wasn’t possible [this would damage insulation and reduce airtightness] so I had to phone Sky and explain the problem. Sure enough, they sent someone else round who found a way round it without damaging the house.
‘I also bought some blinds for the house from Ikea - but again, I couldn’t put them up as that would have involved drilling through the wall. Now I have to take them back.
‘You have to be a bit cautious about what people do when they come round. A friend thought the sound of the monitor [installed in all retrofit for the future houses by the Energy Saving Trust] was that of a cockroach. When she eventually realised that it was just a monitor, she turned it off because the volume annoyed her. My nephews and nieces wanted to play with the temperature adjustments.
‘So far it has been brilliant. I have had to reduce the temperature a bit because it gets hot in the evening. My family and friends come round and they remember me in my slippers and blankets from my last house. I haven’t actually used them since I arrived.
‘I have been opening the back door a bit. It does get pretty stuffy sometimes so we do also sometimes open the windows for a while too.
‘One of my friends has now called her housing association to see if they were doing any Passivhaus schemes; she was told they didn’t know what one was.’
