My first EPC

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 :-)

Commenting on blog posts is one way to get noticed

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.

Assessment in general

 

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.

EPC dates

 

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

Biomass biomass biomass in the UK

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.

CIBSE and EPC’s

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.

Interesting reports

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.

Blogger negativity

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.

The Strata (Multiplex electric razor)

Another day passes and a new tower is being built (hat tip - RatandMouse). Its called the Strata, developer - Multiplex (of Wembley fame - smirk) and Hamiltons are the architects. No word of who is doing the services - bit worrying if, as the blurb says the building is “Adaptable to planned future developments in sustainable technologies within the Elephant & Castle area”.

 Anyway some points:

1) Three 9m wind turbines will probably only produce about 18kW - 30 kW total at peak (based on Proven energy website). Not much for such a high visibility building. Why didn’t they just increase the insulation or better the spec of the windows?

Answer - Because London demands a renewable tithe of 10% or more. Pointless really. I prefer lower fuel bills because the building is airtight and well insulated not some free lighting in stairwells which saves me ooooooh £6 a year.

2) It looks like they only did what the council forced them to do and they are window dressing things?

Answer - Yes.

3) What about the low energy lighting and lower energy costs?

Answer - So as a developer you’d think your engineers specify high energy lighting unless requested? As to the lower fuel bills the poor (on floors G-11; plebs down below - obviously) will watch TV so much on their mega plasma TV’s that this lower cost will disappear when all their equipment is left on (the plebs will not buy the 1 W/s standby TV’s)

4) Is there a proposed Energy Performance Certificate available?

Answer - nope they prefer to say how much better they are than the benchmarks (which are set very very low) - “current and evolving UK building regulations on sustainability by 13%”. Sigh all benchmarks are pretty much beaten by this level.

5) Are you being unfair? Didn’t they go for all those additional design standards (Lifetime Homes Compliant, EcoHomes Very Good, Secure By Design)?

Answer - If they weren’t forced by the planning officers or whoever is looking after the plebs then yes. It is impressive. You’ll notice they haven’t said where they exceeded what was required. That’s the problem with developers - they always look to cut corners and do the minimum. It just looks like they (Multiplex) have got to build a big skyscraper if they could green the building and give the plebs some space to live. Is this what planning is?

Recycling for a year

I’m interested in sustainability - hell we all are. But Ari Derfel kept all his rubbish for a year. I’m impressed.

 One of his lessons was: “Recycling sucks”. I recycle but this does feel part of the green fatigue.

We shall see.