Tony Bryer wrote:
On 22 Jan 2006 20:47:54 GMT Ian Stirling wrote :
Set goals, which might be CO2 emission, operating cost, price,
.... for a house.

Scrap _all_ building/fire/planning regulations for these, and
instead rely on a detailed engineering survey to ensure they meet
the spirit of the regs. Rewrite the regs if required.

The energy regs change in April. A quick and dirty summary of the
requirement is: work out the CO2 emissions for a house of your
proposed size built to the 2002 regs. The estimated CO2 emissions
from your house have to be 20% less than this. How you achieve this
is up to you - more insulation, better windows, condensing boiler,
solar panel are all options

One of the changes is to allow manufacturer's certified figures for
windows: the very best windows now have a negative energy figure -
the solar energy they let in exceeds the heat that leaks out.

More on this at http://www.bfrc.org/Contents.htm

What everybody overlooks with energy saving measures is that fitting
double glazing is about the least cost effective energy saving measure
you can put inplace, compared to all the other things such as replacing
old boilers with condensers, insulation, draught proofing etc. You can
prove this for yourself if you do the calcs for your house.

cheers

Jacob