Argyle Street Housing Co-operative » Eco-houses

Airtightness reports

hamish — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:31:21 +0000

The results of the blower door testing are in! We have reports for 1 Fletchers Terrace and 8 Argyle Street. (Both are PDF files, about 60 kB each).

The reports have quite a few numbers, but the recommendations at the end of the reports are in plain English. Happy reading.

Visit to AC Architects

hamish — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:01:52 +0000

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.

Visit to the BRE

hamish — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:15:48 +0000

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.

Carbon conversations

emilia — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:43:21 +0000

Cambridge is lucky enough to be the home of the excellent climate change NGO Cambridge Carbon Footprint. They do courses called ‘Carbon Conversations’, where people can explore ways in which they can make big reductions in carbon emissions, and together overcome the barriers associated with making such reductions. In the next few weeks there will be a Carbon Conversations course starting in the coop, where participants could not only support each other in reducing their personal carbon footprints, but also work on some community solutions for ASH.

Carbon Conversations is an inspiring, practical 6-session course on low-carbon living. The six 2-hour meetings engage people both emotionally and practically, helping them overcome the barriers often associated with making large carbon reductions. Members explore the basic climate change problem, their responses to it, their ideas for a low-carbon future and the four key areas of the footprint – home energy, travel, food and other consumption. Most members make reductions of 1 tonne CO2 during the course and develop plans to halve their footprints over a longer period.

Iain Webb, who used to live in the coop, will be facilitating the courses with a co-facilitator. Notices of the exact days and times will be sent round houses once they are confirmed. Otherwise email office@ash.coop if you’re interested in participating in a course.

Energy use in houses

emilia — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:42:00 +0000

As part of our eco-renovation project, the coop decided that it would be good to have an energy rep in each house, who would read the meter every month and bring the reading to the office. This hasn’t happened yet, although I’ve been reading the meters every month since November. I’ve also done a bit of analysis of historical energy use in the coop. Here are some graphs for the last 4 years, with 09-10 estimate on the left, and 06-07 readings on the right. There are both total house usages, and per person energy usages. Of course there are all kinds of reasons for differences – some people are hardly ever at home, some like colder temperatures than others, some need to use much more electrical equipment than others… and apparently some houses use their electric immersion heaters for hot water rather than gas. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting – let me know if you come up with any clever explanation of the differences!

There are a couple of websites available if you want to start measuring your energy use and carbon emissions, and comparing with others.

http://www.thecarbonaccount.com/
http://www.imeasure.org.uk/

If you have a look at them, let us know what you think!

Emilia (3 Fletchers)

GAS – you use this for heating, hot water and cooking.

Electricity – you use this for everything else.

There will soon be meters that you can use to find out how much electricity appliances use available in the office.

The graphs are organized in order of house size – flats, house, 4-person houses, then 6-person, then 9/10 person, then flats, then office.

Blower Door Testing

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:03:43 +0000

Today we started doing ‘Blower Door Testing’. Basically this involves opening the front door and putting some fabric in a frame in it’s place. The fabric has a hole for a fan which sucks air out of the house, causing the inside of the house to be at a lower pressure than the outside. This means that air comes through any gaps fairly fast, making it easy to find the holes in the fabric of the building – either by just feeling for it with your hand or using a smoke generator.

In addition, the rate of air flowing through the blower door for a given pressure drop provides a standard measure of the air tightness of the house. This, combined with measuring the size of the house, can tell you how often the air will change in the house. Too little and we get mould growing everywhere. Too much and your heating bill will be rather high.

We found the house tested was fairly airtight, though it appears our windows weren’t fitted all that well – there was plenty of air coming through the crack between the window frame and wall – more than through the small air hole provided at the top of the window frame. (The crack where the closed window met the window frame was pretty good).

Anyway, here are some photos from the day.

The blower door being assembled

The blower door in place

The fan

The smoke generator

Smoke being blown by a draught

The blower door in place (from outside)