Bloody brilliant buildings

Excellent FT article this weekend in their magazine. Plastic is bad, right?

“societies without sophisticated packaging lose half their food before it reaches consumers. In the UK, waste in our supply chains is about 3 per cent. In India, it is more than 50 per cent. The difference comes later: we throw out 30 per cent of the food we buy - an environmental cost in terms of emissions equivalent to a fifth of the cars on our roads.”

Mmmm not so simple when you look at things now?

Reminds me of clients who only want wind turbines and photovoltaics - being visibly green is more important than being green.

About the FT article - there was a nice graph; not on the linked article :-( that said wine was one of the worst offenders for packaging. Being a drinker i don’t mind lsoing corked bottles but losing glass seems a step too far….

addenda - <better uk link> check out the graph especially.

addenda - <the packaging presentation> from the article.

Tom

One day i will the del.ico.us thing (but i have to understand the plug in thingy).

Bottom feeding - Alice, a rather delightful architect, comments on how most architects are ignored by RIBA. I worked for a starchitect and RIBA really is their friend. RIBA think, in their dark bowels, that the future of architecture is with larger practices. This leaves most architects who aim to get good in large practices and then start their own one man bands very much alone. I hope the little man stops paying their subs…..its the only way to change.

A bit old but RMJM Hillier is a having a laugh. RH are saying that there are not enough architects out there……Reality check - They are a starchitect and they need their slaves to do the work winning. Sorry the slaves are asking for decent salaries and now they need more. This reminds me of the housing bubble - suddenly everyone doesn’t want to architecture (rejoice!)

I just did my first EPC. Feel slightly dirty.

The thing about EPC’s is that you have to survey the building (easy), measure the geometry (any moron who doesn’t employ a surveyor with 3D measuring equipment is a cretin) and understand the services strategy.

Then bish bash bosh plug it into SBEM and out comes a EPC. Easy….well yes. Oh here’s the bill for £5K. I want to do some private work :-)

Mel Starrs has outed me. It is a nom de plume. Guilty as charged. Nice to be called young. Mel - you’re fab too (returning the compliment and showing Thomas is not young).

Why Thomas? well its in a fab book which including services history. Did the first textbook of services (i think?) Principles of Warming and Ventilating Public Buildings.

You’ve got your Ecohomes Code for sustainable homes, BREEAM, CEQUAAL, DEA, EA and other hangers on…

Why is assessment so sexy. Is it like quality was in the 80’s?

Well yes. Another way we can assess someone’s design skills. I think it all came when clients (from the 70’s) realised just how greedy and crap most designers are. I mean we are just bottom feeders of the worst sort. I’ve worked for the best architects in the world and some commercial engineers - the main thing is always money money money. Design is purely functional and window dressed so the client feels happy.

Having said all this clients are worse.

6th April is here. Tomorrow all buildings will need EPC’s. Well only really big ones. 10,000 m².

Current word on the street is that EPC’s will cost clients £5000 per building. We’ll be using our junior of junior engineers and surveyors while our senior (who are a bitch to keep) engineers will get the training. So they feel good.

Why can’t everything be done by a junior engineer….Then we’d make £4000 profit not just £2500.

Tom

Sounds like a slogan. It just might be.

Just returned from an interesting seminar on biomass. In particular wood fired boilers and people’s experience of them in Scotland. Lovely people.

The main thing I took away was that biomass is here to stay however there is a big public health risk to deal with. The fact is, is that biomass boilers are much dirtier than gas boilers.

So dirty that they may go beyond what the Clean Air act imposes. Although living near a motorway does that too……

Mmmmmm will this prevent councils making biomass CHP the way to go. hasn’t stopped Sweden doing this. Years ago.

From a building services point of view its a pain.

Gas boiler - get gas into boiler house. Allow for boilers and maintenance access.

Wood boilers - allow for boilers and maintenance space. Allow for storage for wood. Tell client that fuel quality is really really important knowing he will ignore you. Send multiple emails hoping this will protect you when he sues. Tell architect to sort out access for a full on artic lorry so wood can be delivered. Tell civil engineer that the fuel store needs to be 4 m deep in the basement - hope the store is not flooded. Find space for enormous hot water tank fro fuel boiler as wood boilers do not switch off quickly and you have to put the heat somewhere.

Think about the fact that this is a bit like coal coming back.

lastly hope some green fucker will not blame you for a local rise on birth defects.

OR specify a gas boiler……..

on a tight fee based on lowest cost wins tender. I wonder what services engineers will go for…..

Some links

Lot of specs here

http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk

Which i want to read.

As an aside blogging is hard. Much write more.

Yay, CIBSE members (with qualifications) can do EPC’s. How many existing buildings are there out there that need EPC’s. A lot. A largish commercial building will cost about £2000 -£3000 a pop. Imagine if you are a university or council…….that’s a lot of money you have to find this year….

I suspect most engineers will not want the work. Its auditing for gods sake. No fun. And there is no real work after this year.

Never thought a manual would be interesting but there you go…

SBEM technical manual 

The SBEM technical manual is out - woohoo. Finally i can discover why the low carbon buildings are actually low carbon. SBEM is a program you have to run if you have a new building in the UK. A bit like an audit. Problem was - the methodology was hidden and the best way to get past it was to install air conditioning in buildings. Its way harder to get a naturally ventilated building through SBEM than an air conditioned one……

UKGBC low carbon buildings report

Since the green council has taken over the large building side of the UK governments low carbon strategy its interesting to see what they want (report here). Mainly being negative about the present intiatives (though with fixes) and keeping with this silly idea i keep seeing - we should allow off site or near site renewables. This won’t work. Sadly this shows the engineers are not talking to the lawyers. Our electricity and gas industry is really really regulated. Say you install offsite windmills to power a block of flats. As a flat owner if you want to swap supplier of electricity it is easy - unless you deliver so called “private networks” you can’t force soemone who buys a house / buildings to use a certain electricity supplier. They can and will swap. Given that these so called low carbon schemes have payback periods of less than zero then you have a recipe of the electricity generating bit folding within a few years as people who move into flats, etc moving suppliers and the more expensive low carbon electrity being used by no-one. I prefer the google sort of thinking - RE<C.

I wrote this blog to earn to write and i was struck by adam curtis’s comments about blogging in general. He’s a fairly cool director of documentaries i wish i saw (Power of Nightmares, etc). Anyway the quote i was struck by was..

First of all, the people who do blogging, for example, are self-selecting. Quite frankly it’s quite clear that what bloggers are is bullies. The internet has removed a lot of constraints on them. You know what they’re like: they’re deeply emotional, they’re bullies, and they often don’t get out enough. And they are parasitic upon already existing sources of information - they do little research of their own.

- Adam Curtis: The TV elite has lost the plot

I just did that on my previous post. Mmmmm must do better.