Ventilation was much in my mind as I dipped in and out of conversations and seminars at Ecobuild this week. And I began to notice a disturbing tendency for airtightness measures and ventilation to be discussed quite separately, with the costs and benefits of each addressed almost as though the two were unrelated.
Again and again, ventilation appeared to be an afterthought, or a problem, instead of an integral part of the assessment of building performance. Several people also lamented that “well, you can get draft proofing done on a Green Deal, but ventilation doesn’t meet the golden rule, so who will pay for it? – it can’t be funded”. And alarmingly, this dangerous split seems to be reflected in the very structure of the Green Deal.[1]
This strikes me as rather like saying “you can get this operation that you need, but there is no money to sew you up afterwards”.
Ventilation seemed almost to be resented, an ‘obstacle’ in the way of deeper carbon cuts, limiting what could be achieved. All that fresh air spoils the building performance, it seems.
This put me in mind of a similar flavour you find in discussions about ‘comfort taking’. Once again, the pesky needs of the occupants are getting in the way of the true goal of carbon cutting. Thus in its Green Deal Impact Assessment DECC complained that “comfort taking” leads to “underachievement in real-world energy savings”.[2] Is it really an “underachievement” to make someone’s house more comfortable?
In both these instances, there is a not-so-hidden subtext that the base animal needs of building occupants are a real hindrance to the low-energy, zero carbon perfection we are seeking. And in a way, you can see how if your job is to achieve these goals, a building with no occupiers would solve a lot of your problems.
So it might be unexpected in a way, that it takes Passivhaus, possibly the most shamelessly geeky and science-based standard of them all, to be the one that not only embraces the occupant, but actually starts from the occupant perspective. My understanding of Passivhaus design is it is built from the premise that occupants want comfortable, healthy buildings that are cheap to run. And yet, somehow, it looks as though Passivhaus manages to deliver the lowest energy and (I think you could easily argue) lowest emissions buildings of the lot of them.
Which is why (or at least one of the reasons why), as I remarked on Twitter this morning, I found that Passivhaus crept into my mind quite often, when I was pondering my uneasiness with what was being said outside the Passivhaus sessions. I think the Passivhaus lot are on to something.
[1] I was told that for post 1919 buildings there is not anything in the Green Deal that requires the advisors to assess ventilation, even when they recommend draftproofing. There are especially serious concerns about the mass-scale installation of solid wall insulation, where the installer alone is responsible for the ventilation strategy, with no back-stop liability resting with a Green Deal provider. This is an issue that needs more than a blog to tackle – hopefully I will get the chance to come back to this soon.
[2] DECC June 2012 Green Deal Impact Assessment