"IMM" wrote in message
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"Mal" wrote in message
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"Mike Mitchell" wrote in message
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On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 00:30:47 -0000, "IMM" wrote:

Poorly designed houses that cost a
fortune to heat and collectively
contribute vast amounts of CO2 to
global warming should be demolished.
The current new houses should get
100 years. But if far superior newer, no
heating houses are common in 30, 40,
50 years, it is easy to dispose of the
current crop.

Making poor technology to last is silly.

For the sake of three hundred pounds'
worth of insulation?

£300 to insulate an uninsulated house properly to currenbt building regs,
never mind the 2007 regs? Get real!

Not to mention the waste in terms of
energy and materials to replace all
those perfectly good houses.

They are NOT good. Most are fit for purpose. No insulation whatsoever,
too
small, designed for time with different values and lifestyles. Most are
only fit for demolition. It usually costs more to just to get them to
current building regs (which is being seriously ramped up in insulation
and
air-tightness soon) than to pull down and start again.


There is no need to keep everything up to the current regs. Time will
gradually result in replacement of buildings. Artificially accelerating the
process is wasteful. If they last an extraordinary amount of time, that
says more for their fittness for purpose than any paper argument.

You already know my feelings on air tightness etc.

BTW, where do you propose to find the army of builders required to construct
all these replacement houses, and if you do get them, what will they all do
once they have finished?


Concrete production is responsible for a large
chunk of CO2 emissions.

Then we have to use timber, which using planned forests absorbs CO2 as it
grows. Timber houses are equally as good, if not better, than brick. A
forest looks better than a brick works.

I have no problem with that, although I wonder about the longevity of such
buildings in our windy and damp environment. I know they have a lot of
wooden buildings in the US, and it certainly rains there, but is it quite as
damp as Britain? And as windy? Mind you, I quite like traditional American
style wooden house, but it would be hard to build one here because everyone
would say it was out of character (after what you have posted, you couldn't
use that argument without being hypocritical, but you would still object,
probably on the grounds that it is "old" ).


Then there is the track record of modern day planners and architects to
consider. To up themselves for our own good, IMO. I'd hate to live in
a
town where every building was treated as art and made to be
"challenging"
to
the viewer, rather than just suffering the occasional hideous
construction
you get now.

Occasionally! The place is full of appalling pastiche retros.


True, but then practically all buildings are a pastiche of what has gone
before.


Q: What is the difference between new house design in Banff, Bognor,
Basingstoke, Bangor, or Beaconsfield? - A: None


So? There isn't going to be a local style these days. If you were to build
a house from scratch, how could you make it recognisable as a house from a
particular part of the country. Any new design that you would favour is
going to be distinct from it's neighbours, and therefore not localised.


snip rest of cut-and-paste rant.

Mal