On the evening of February the 11th a few of us went to a talk at AC Architects organised by Cambridge Carbon Footprint. They were talking about the refurbishment of the building they work in.
They did a lot of environmental improvements including boreholes for a ground source heat pump, solar thermal, natural ventilation and rain water recycling. First Anne Cooper talked about the plan and intention, and then her husband talked about the practicalities of doing it and how well the different aspects worked.
They used rainwater for flushing toilets and the like, but they found the filter needed cleaning weekly and it doesn’t actually rain all that much in Cambridge. Still they sometimes get a negative water bill as there is a “surface water drainage allowance” for not letting your rain water go into the sewers.
The equipment needed to dig the boreholes was very difficult to get into the back garden. And the pipes from the boreholes to the house aren’t insulated so they need to dig up the connecting pipes again.
The solar thermal and the natural ventilation both work very well though.
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- Natural Ventilation
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- Model of the house
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- Underfloor space
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- Some of the basement piping