"Mal" wrote in message
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"IMM" wrote in message
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"Mal" wrote in message
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"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 NOT 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.

Not in this daft country they will not.

Artificially accelerating the
process is wasteful.

I repeat they are NOT fit for pupose. They are designed for a time with
different values and lifestyles.


Well they're doing a damn fine job for something that you think is unfit.

If they last an extraordinary amount of time, that
says more for their fittness for purpose than
any paper argument.

They have lasted because of circumstances, not because they were though
good
or valued in some perverse way.


They have lasted because they are well built. The bad ones have been or
are
being demolished anyway.

You already know my feelings on air tightness etc.

You mean you haven't a clue about it or controlled ventilation.


What is the point of putting all that effort into sealing a room, only to
then spend more money blowing air into it? That's the peverse logic of
the
eco-retard.

Energy conservation is a red herring. All the fossil fuel will be burnt
in
the end. Even if we cut consumption to 25% of the current level, it will
just be burnt over the next 200 years instead of the next 50. All that
CO2
is going into the atmosphere eventually - doing it slightly slower won't
help the climate.
In fact, it would be better to burn it all now, so we can have done with
these stupid arguments, and shortsighted single-issue dumbasses supporting
regulations that mean everyone is supposed to live in an airtight shoebox.


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?

The older buildings the start to come down. One of the basic cores of
the
economies of the USA and Germany is the construction business. In
Germany
and the USA they don't think it is anti-eco to build fine spacious homes
on
green field sites, despite both having larger green movements than the
UK,
especially Germany. Well they don't have the vested interests of large
landowners having green propaganda fronts, like Friends of The Earth, to
brainwash people to leave the countryside alone and live all bunched up
on
top of each other in small super expensive boxes. No one converts barns
in
Germany. They think it a silly idea .

In 2001 the UK only built twice as many new homes as Ireland. UK = 60
to
62
million; Ireland 3.3 million. An absolute disgrace!!! No wonder
Prescott
is threatening with his left hook. I hope he uses it.

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.

The oldest timber building is an Church in Essex from the 1200s. Whole
town
centres in places like Ludlow and Shrewsbury are timber houses.

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?

Yes. Seattle has a higher rainfall than Manchester, and a very UK
climate.

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" ).

If someone wants to build a US style house, let them. If someone wants
a
pastiche piece of junk, let them.

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.

That is the problem. We have this forced down out throats.

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.

The big brother style police planners, should not be involved in style.
Not
their business. In designated areas like the York's Dales yes,
elsewhere,
they should mind their own business.


Why should the Dales be protected any more than another part of the
country?
Because it fits *your* personal aesthetic?

The whole area is homogeneous in vernacular, and if people like it that way,
fine by me.

Everyone else can just shut up
and suffer the local modernist eyesore, I take it.

Modernist eyesore? What crap! We don;t have modern architecture in this
country. The T&C planning act abolished it.