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Housing - Renovation: Window Detailing CWI v CWI with EWI

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      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2026 edited
     
    Posted By: WillInAberdeenThey usually claim the woodfibre stores carbon during growing and emits carbon during manufacturing and transport. At end of life the EPD might claim it will be carefully unglued from the wall and reused (this seems unlikely to me!) or that it will be co-fired in a German coal power station and displace coal use (hopefully those will be closed by then!) or that it will be construction rubble landfill (seems most likely).

    Depending what they claim will happen at end of life, the claimed carbon balance will be zero, negative or (most likely) net emissions.
    For my simple brain, locking up carbon today in wood is a good thing. What happens to it at sometime in the future (60 years, 100 years, 1000 years?) is speculative now and something to be considered at that time, in whatever circumstances prevail at that time.
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      CommentAuthorfostertom
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2026 edited
     
    Parex>Sika - gd choice then.

    Totally agree Dave. Eggheads' purist caution with end-of-life ambiguity seriously threatens, or obstructs, today's progressive solutions, principally sequestration, incl the variable criteria consequently being applied in EPDs, which discredit and confuse matters fatally at present.
  3.  
    Selling a product today that will inescapably emit carbon in 60 years time, is no better than emitting the carbon today. Morally even worse, if people of today pretend it's not our problem but something for our grandkids to deal with.


    If a product locks up carbon for geological time, say 10000 years, that's great, but anything less is greenwash ISTM.


    It's no different if I build out of asbestos which won't be a problem until my grandkids break it up in 60 years, or I build a nuclear reactor that won't become nuclear waste until my grandkids decommission it in 60 years. The inevitable pollution emissions are still my fault, not theirs, and not something for me to wave away as egghead purism that delays progress for my own generation.
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      CommentAuthorfostertom
    • CommentTimeSep 5th 2026 edited
     
    Fair comment, in case of asbestos and nuclear examples, but carbon sequestration? That one seems an infinitely easier bet for the grandchildren to solve - and it has the virtue, which asb and nuke haven't, of immediately preventing otherwise inevitable CO2 emission, and doing so at this particularly crucial moment when other emission-reduction and carbon-recapture measures haven't got off the ground, and the priority is to delay irreversible tipping points until we can avoid them permanently as we catch up by aforesaid measures.

    And, once buildings become active carbon-recapture machines throughout their in-use life, accumulating sequestered carbon within their structure, in a swelling hillock of the soil beneath, or removed to elsewhere as it arises, will you say that that kind of sequestered carbon is a time bomb for the grandchildren?
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      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeSep 5th 2026
     
    Well said, Tom. Or if atmospheric carbon absorption turns out to be practical technology or if ... That's the point, we don't know what the future will bring.
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      CommentAuthorfostertom
    • CommentTimeSep 5th 2026
     
    But we can choose now whether to hope for best, or accommodate to the worst. As well as blaming us for the failure so far, they'll also blame us for choosing the wrong way, as above!
  7.  
    Optimal depth of EPS for EWI before diminishing returns?

    I assume you'd want a 50mm external reveal minimum for weather protection? So the window would probably need to go in the rear section of the insulation layer?
    • CommentAuthorMike1
    • CommentTimeSep 5th 2026
     
    Posted By: VictorianecoOptimal depth of EPS for EWI before diminishing returns?
    Sadly, diminishing returns kick in from the first mm :)

    I could point you to examples of what others have done, or you could average the responses of those of us who reply, but you are planning a fairly deep energy-saving renovation involving a healthy budget.

    Taking a step back, it may be worth putting some science behind this by getting your plans modelled in PHPP - the Passivhaus Planning Package. I know you're not building a Passivhaus, but the software is about the best tool there is for these kinds of questions. For example, it would allow you to explore the impact of different insulation thicknesses, whether the premium cost of triple glazing everywhere (rather than, for example, only on the North elevation) would be better used for extra wall or loft insulation, calculate overheating risk, and suggest other measures that you might want to consider.

    I can see that you're keen to get moving, but this need not involve a big delay or cost, and it's what I'd do in your circumstances.

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