[Paul Buckingham]

Probably well past the sell by date on this one but I have been carrying out thermal imaging surveys for 6 years on many houses identifying easy wins as well as bigger issues on new builds as well as older buildings. Large scale projects are probably not so effective as individual surveys. Each building will have it's own issues and not always something that can be rolled out on other similar buildings. I would be more than happy to discuss thermal imaging with you.

[Paul Buckingham]

Maybe this could bring about some long overdue prosecutions for non compliance!

[Paul Buckingham]

Energy efficiency really is little more than individual choice to really achieve it, or measured and proved by how many boxes you have ticked!
I know schools in some local authorities have had energy audits carried out that are useful really only as future material for Andrex! Yet these audits have been used to prove energy savings of around 15% across the board and win awards for environmental excelence! In most cases the 'recommendations' have not been taken up by the individual schools because they do not have any faith in the LA's and their building and maintenance partners and have no desire to work with them. The claimed energy savings and reductions are based purely on the predictions and calculations within these audits and are proved by lots of bits of paper with ticks on them and not actual energy savings! One school I know of had an extension built, by one such LA maintenance provider, which had no insulation in the roof whatsoever, built in 2006 it did not meet the building regulations for roof U value at the time by a mile! We told the school about this and they questioned the provider, and I am now prepared to name them and put my head on the block here, Mouchel Parkman, they replied by sending a man in a suit out with a piece of paper proving what insulation had been installed, I wish I had been there been there at the time because I would have ripped his evidence to pieces and shoved his head into the ceiling void and demanded he show me where it was because despite removing ceiling tiles and poking around I could not find it!!!!!
I really am very frustrated by the tick box society we live in, not just buildings and energy efficiency but the NHS, banking, education, the environment………the list goes on. Politics in general is all about ticking boxes to achieve everything required without actually doing anything tangible or achieving anything worthwhile.

Rant over, Paul.

[Paul Buckingham]

If it's anything like the EPC assessors then I wouldn't go near it. EPC assessors had to shell out about £2500 to become qualified and there was a massive push to get assessors because of the expected demand for EPC's. As it turned out there was very little work and loads of assessors, as a result you can get an EPC for about £30. I suspect the GD will go the same way.

Save your money.

[Paul Buckingham]

Hi Mark, it was built in around 1963 and is probably about 30mm wide with a gale force 9 whistling through!

I do thermal imaging and I have seen cold air penetrating behind dry lining in a number of new builds. In this day and age with building regulations supposedly tightening up why are these things not being addressed. I think a full survey of a new property should be carried out by someone who knows what they are looking for, including air tightness and thermal imaging, before a building can be signed off and it should be either a pass or a fail instead of “that will do”. If it is a fail the builder should be forced to strip out the building, rectify all the identified issues and pay for a second survey to be carried out. They would only have to do this once because the first fail would be so costly that they would never want another!

[Paul Buckingham]

I have a cavity in my party wall with next door and the draught whistling through this is staggering. I think this is potentially a major problem with old housing stock and also potentially very difficult to address. It can more than likely be found in most new builds aswell!

[Paul Buckingham]

They cold called at my door a couple of months ago and I just shut the door. I think there are loads of companies out there flogging this kind of stuff and getting away with their unfounded claims. Maybe the BBC should do a Rogue Traders type program on them to show them for what they are.

[Paul Buckingham]

I had an e-mail a couple of months ago from a GD Advisor Training company trying to get me to part with £2500 to become a GD advisor. One part of this really sums up the whole GD, “the Green Deal is due for release in October 2012 which is the Governments flagship policy for improving the energy efficiency of buildings in Great Britain. Currently there are NO Green Deal Advisors trained to meet this demand.” This statement demonstrates that the GD is nowhere near ready when advisor training doesn't start until 4 months before GD Day and they need “a national workforce trained and prepared“. Or is it stating that up until now nobody has wanted to become an assessor because everybody has got more sense! I have copied the e-mail below with names, etc edited out. Below this is my response, I didn't get a reply!

“Good Afternoon
As I am sure you are aware, the Green Deal is due for release in October 2012 which is the Governments flagship policy for improving the energy efficiency of buildings in Great Britain. Currently there are NO Green Deal Advisors trained to meet this demand. A Green Deal Advisor is the first port of call for any consumer wishing to take advantage of the Green Deal finance options. Courses are rolling out in July (first being July 16th) which leaves a very small window (4 Months) to get a national workforce trained and prepared. A very difficult task in such a short space of time.

I would like to enquire if ****************** have made any commitments to train members of staff to become Qualified Green Deal Advisors?
******** are an ABBE certified Green Deal Advisor training provider and currently offering 2 options for Green Deal Adviser Training.

Option 1. This option is a top-up qualification for individuals who already hold the DEA – Domestic Energy Assessors qualification and have also completed the 2012 update. (2012 update is also available separately if required)

Option 2. The full course – Zero to Hero, This will take candidates through the whole process which includes: Domestic Energy Assessor Training, 2012 update and Green Deal Advisor Training all in one package.
I have attached the course outlines for both options and I would be very grateful for any feedback you may have. We are also running an introductory discount of 10% on the lead up to our 5th anniversary of becoming a dedicated renewable energy training provider.
Please visit our website www.*******.com for a full timetable.
If you require any further information, please don't hesitate to get in touch”

My response.

“Thank you for your e-mail.

I have been following the Green Deal debate for some time and to be blunt, I and many others cannot see it working.

The assessor training scheme costing £2500 will make most people run a mile, the DEA scheme promised plenty of work for all assessors and in reality there were so many assessors that EPC’s could be obtained for next to nothing and the assessors had little or no return for their investment to become an assessor. Up grading this DEA to Green Deal assessor status will probably attract nobody because they have already had their fingers burnt and won’t be caught again.

The government leaving 4 months to get a full work force together to run a massive national scheme is very short sighted, the construction industry does not have the full understanding of how the Green Deal is going to work and what it is supposed to achieve. Who is going to take on the Green Deal, it promises a reduction in your energy bill of more that the loan repayments so the overall bill should be lower, and then it states that in some cases the overall bill may actually rise. Most people would not risk having their homes turned upside down for a few weeks on the understanding that they may or may not have a lower energy bill at the end of it. The people that can afford to take the risk will probably be quite happy paying the energy bills they already have, the ones in fuel poverty cannot afford to take the risk so where is the Green Deal market?

Sorry to be so negative but the general feeling from many people within the industry is that the Green Deal although being, in principal, a good idea, is very unlikely to work due to many factors that DECC seem to have ignored.”

I'm interested to know how many people have actually signed up to become GD Advisors, I suspect it's very few.

[Paul Buckingham]

One thing with the assessment for the green deal, if the EPC assessment is anything to go by, how can someone with no knowledge of how a building is put together and how the materials work within the building become a qualified building assessor after a 2 day course? A 2 day course would teach you to use a calculator and how to tick the relevant boxes but beyond that not a lot else!

[Paul Buckingham]

From my experience, community groups carry out vast quantities of surveys within a short space of time by taking a couple of images of each house from the outside. I find that external images like this actually show very little of any real value, the best they are likely to achieve is raise an interest in thermal imaging. I have my own camera and use it to indicate missing insulation, draughts, etc, each survey usually takes at least an hour and I mainly work around the inside of the house which really shows up some scarey stuff!
If you are looking to buy a community camera I would seriously think about what you are hoping to achieve with it, getting useful information takes time and needs a degree of skill to interpret what you see. If your community have time to spare to really look in depth at each building then I see no reason for not purchasing one, however if you are looking to carry out quantity surveys of whole streets, etc in a few evenings then the benefits probably do not justify the financial outlay.
Generating interest in thermal imaging by hiring a camera for a week and then passing on the interest to a professional is probably a better way to go to produce some real energy saving advice and results.

[Paul Buckingham]

I think the GD could only work with independent GD Project Managers, there are numerous builders out there who would want to jump on the GD band wagon but, from my experience, energy efficiency really seems to be the last thing on their minds.
Putting GD Project Managers in control of each installation would open the market to many builders and also through proper management would help to develop a vital strong understanding of what energy efficiency is all about. The problem with the majority of builders currently is that they do just enough to scrape through building regulations requirements without a full understanding of what they are aiming to achieve. With proper PM by someone who is fully up to speed on the why's and how's of energy efficiency, builders will gain the knowledge that is seriously missing within the industry today.

[Paul Buckingham]

I think the big picture stuff is very relevant, the GD is really only offering an idea of what could be achieved if everyone takes on the scheme and all who work on it really know what they are aiming to achieve! The big picture is that we all need to do something now (apart from Andy who's already done it! ;D) if we want to live in warm comfortable homes in the future without having to rely on loads of energy.
I very much doubt that the GD is the definitive answer and it will probably be replaced in due course with something else that will also achieve very little. The main driver for energy efficient refurb en-mass in the future will not start to kick in until we start to run out of energy, experience power cuts and gas shortages and energy bills need delivering by lorry. We only start to make changes when we actually have to (when it starts to hurt) not when we are told to or can by choice.

Paul.

[Paul Buckingham]

Heinbloed, please just quit, your just looking a fool and obviously you know best so whatever anyone says is going to be wrong in your eyes, I notice you are not an AECB member, I wonder why?

[Paul Buckingham]

The total electricity generating capacity in the UK at present is 90,208MW as of 2010, your 24MW PV array in Germany would need to be multiplied by 3758.66 which would cover an area of 300692.8 hectares or 1160.981 square miles or about 1/7th of the area of wales and would cost approximately 206.726 billion Euros!

The capacity of 24MW is also a maximum output when the sun is shining in the summer, in the winter this will be massively reduced and this is the time time of year when we need heating.

There are many ways of storing electricity, you mentioned batteries, do you know the environmental impact of battery production and disposal, it's massive!

How will the demand fluctuations be be dealt with, when the demand goes up suddenly you need a massive boost to the generating capacity in an instant, batteries cannot deal with this!

Most domestic PV arrays fall well short of producing the full demand of electricity for the house it is sat on so it needs further capacity from outside.

Your idea seems like a wonderful solution but in reality it will help a little bit but certainly for the foreseeable future, it will never be a solution on its own. The only way to meet future energy demands is through a combination of several generating sources, PV, hydro, wind, nuclear and gas but also considerable reduction of energy consumption, which is where the insulation comes in!

This is the reality of the way we consume and generate electricity, there is no way around it, I am working on energy reduction, we don't need to consume and waste the amount we do so reducing to a sustainable level that we actually need to use is a no brainer. By reducing consumption we can continue to live comfortable lives without the need to generate electricity on the scale we currently do.

Energy prices will continue to rise at an increasing rate, that is a fact, energy will become harder for many people to afford and so energy reduction through insulation and lifestyle change is going to be vital in the future, PV is not and never will be the answer to unlimited cheap electricity as you claim.

[Paul Buckingham]

I have seen this and I think is definitely the way to go, throwing all the QE into the black hole that is the banking system achieves little other than ensuring the bankers get their bonuses.

When the recession first hit and the government bailed out the banks, racing commentator John McCririck said it would have been far better to have given these billions of £ to the public to boost spending and get money circulating.

This insulation scheme will achieve two key things, it will enable many buildings to reach the energy efficiency levels required to meet targets and boost the economy putting cash back into circulation and creating jobs.

Removing VAT from these materials will make them more affordable and the QE will go further. Having people employed doing the installation work will drastically increase tax revenue and remove people from benefits and effectively take a bit of the strain out of the public purse.

[Author]

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