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Green Building Bible, Fourth Edition
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General: School heat losses

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeDec 19th 2007
     
    We have been talking about reducing heat losses from homes and the way forward to very good effect.

    But what about schools? Often flat roofed without any insulation! From a virtual satellite they would appear as white hot square patchworks in every town.

    Heating is paid for directly bu all of us -- akin to putting radiators in our gardens and told that they must be turned on!
    • CommentAuthorCWatters
    • CommentTimeDec 20th 2007
     
    Frequently have large windows as well.
    • CommentAuthorBowman
    • CommentTimeDec 20th 2007
     
    Tony I guess the technical principles remain much the same, in some ways easier because schools are closed for partof the year, perhaps funding should come from taxes raised from inefficient homes (stamp duty, council tax, direct fuel taxes)
  4.  
    I was speaking to a guy from a NHS research group looking at reducing carbon/energy wastage in the NHS
    he said the NHS was the largest single producer of carbon in the UK
    I thought they were supposed to be looking after our health!

    I guess hospital like schools suffer from whats mentioned above
    Old buildings poorly funded for years ,
    my kid's schools gym roof leaks like a sieve and there paying for it through money raised by the parent association

    Same with all HMG buildings

    again were paying for there inefficencies
    what the answer?
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeDec 20th 2007
     
    We could try saying,"if you get your house in order then we will do the same" -- We (some of us) have already done it though, when (if ever) will HMG follow?

    And they are the ones telling us to do it-- is there any hope?
    • CommentAuthorsipman
    • CommentTimeDec 20th 2007
     
    Not all bad news ! we have recentley supplied and erected a stand alone two storey eight class room block with offices

    Which when air pressure tested achived an air leakage of 1.7
    • CommentAuthorCWatters
    • CommentTimeDec 20th 2007
     
    Shouldn't be a surprise that the NHS emits a lot of CO.....

    If I've got my figures right the NHS budget in 2006/7 was £75B ($150B) which is more than the GDP of quite a few countries. For example more than the GDP of Singapore, Pakistan, New Zealand, Kuwait... If the NHS was a country it would rank about 39th out of 180 countries ranked by GDP...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
    • CommentAuthorskywalker
    • CommentTimeDec 20th 2007
     
    I actually worked as a caretaker in a small school for a short time and it was as bad or worse than you have outlined.

    The problem was that whilst the building fabric was leaky, flat roof/prefab concrete walls, single glazed metal framed glass wall to each classroom facing south and a couple of those portacabin like structures called terrapins all of which were rotten it was just about possible with running repairs to keep it going. Many schools and hospitals are in the same position, basically not worth it to upgrade them but just about worth it to keep them going as the funds to replace them do not exist.

    I have also visited a couple of new schools (same education authority) which have all the bells and whistles that you would expect on a modern public building (low carbon materials, rainwater recovery, solar water heating, solar PV, low e glazing, flooded with natural light but with solar gain carefully managed - they even had lindab gutters!). How was this achieved? buy selling off the old school site on one case (village primary) and 2/3 of the sports fields in the other (2ndry). Most new schools are not built to this standard but are way better than their outdated predecessors. I have not seen one that has not had to lose much of its site to shoe box housing estates filled with plasterboard tents.

    We are not seperate from HMG (if we like it or not) we fund their activites, we take part (even if we opt out) in a democratic process to define the direction (or lack of it) that they take. If 'we' say to 'them' when you have sorted out all the public buildings in terms of their environmental performance 'we' will sort our semi's out then we'd better be prepared for the bill!
    • CommentAuthorSimonH
    • CommentTimeDec 27th 2007
     
    This point that "when you sort out yours we'll do ours" is repeasted by many of the people I've spoken to recently. The worse case being my borhter in law. He has a victorian terrace - which he's rennovating. I treid to convince him to do some external insualtion as he currently has the internal walls stripped back to brickwork. But he's not interested. Either from environmental, cost or comfort reasons. He can afford his heating bills, says he'll think about the environment when car dealerships start turning their lights off at night, and the house is warm enough with the heating on. :-(

    Outside of this forum there's a lot of people fed up with hearing environmental messages.

    I did try to convince him business are starting to change, as they've started to understand they can make saving on their bottom line. It's just that it's not all obvious. (Tesco's have made something like a 30% cost reduction).

    Back to schools, would it be better to knock down and rebuild rather than trying to upgrade/insulate properly? It seems there's sporadic activity to add new blocks on to schools, but nothing yet done to replace/update a lot of old (and also beautiful) victorian blocks. The 1960's boxes can get the bulldozer treatment as far as I'm concerned. When you hear schools are spending hundreds of thousands on energy bils , you start to think , surely they need some kind of modular replacement programme, so year by year they can add more and more efficient buildings and free up that £200k to be put to better use than heating. And is anyone was going to use PV, surely schools would be the polace to put it - for they are the one "industry" where they are really only open during daylight hours. The excess in the summer could then be sold off (note - I'm not a big fan of PV, but if the governement are giving away money to subsidise it, then maybe they should give the lot to schools - the money will still end up with the installers to jump start the industry).

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