On the 11th of February we had a trip to the BRE, near Watford, to look at energy efficient buildings and to talk about refurbishing our houses to be more energy efficient.
We were introduced to the work of the BRE and regailed with stories of their work burning buildings, shaking buildings (inside a big concrete building) and even building sections of sports stadiums and getting half the staff to stand on it and stamp their feet in time. Sounds like a fun place to work.
We then had a tour of the innovation park – where different companies come and build eco-friendly houses to try out new techniques. One nice touch was using old car tyres as tiles – even from quite close up they looked like slate tiles.
And finally we had a lovely lunch and discussed ways we might get hold of funding to help pay for our refurbishments.
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- Welcome to the BRE
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- Curved roof
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- Inside one of the houses
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- A biomass boiler
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- Two of the houses
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- A window into the floor insulation
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- Nice understair storage
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- Up into silver foil land
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- Another view of the houses
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- Chair made from a shopping trolley
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- Skylight
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- A skylight with foil
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- Another view of the foiled skylight
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- A selection of wall claddings