to think all new-builds should be passivhauses?

[ParsingFancy]

Heating bill £20 a year. Looks like a normal house.

What's not to like?

And it's not rocket science: they're just houses where insulation and ventilation have been thought about at the beginning, rather than being an incomplete afterthought.

Additional cost over building non-passivhaus: £20K.

These are great! I want one

YANBU. Although I think the way building regulations are going, we're slowly getting there anyway. Retro-fitting older houses to be much more fuel-efficient is a capital infrastructure/job creation opportunity we're currently missing. I'd love the government to start with private landlords and social housing and make it a condition of letting that the home met a particular energy rating. Then offer incentives for home-owners to upgrade, insulate and so on. It's still a too-big expense for many.

Why do they have to look so ugly?
They can build them in a more attractive style and still offer the same benefits.

I think in addition to this it should be compulsary for new-builds to have solar panels on the roof and to have a decent sized garden to allow families to grow veg/fruit.

They look like a great idea.

As far as your OP goes tho, YABU. We are not a country that is in a position to be choosy when it comes to building new social housing (which is what the house featured was)

Sadly, according to that article, building regulations have just been rolled back.

Presumably to "help builders in the tight economy", or similar bollocks.

It's really crap. Part of the additional cost of passivhauses, IIUC, is the work must be done carefully and can't be slapdash. So that's more manhours - itself is a boost to the economy.

And the additional build-cost is more than cancelled out in reduced fuel usage - an aim in itself, and the reason the utility companies are spending millions on smart meters.

I'm that regs have been rolled back.

In what way are we not in a position to be choosy about the quality of new housing, SaucyJack?

And I'm talking about all housing.

You're so right about the cost of retro-fitting, Cogito. Now I think about it, £20K is less than the cost we were quoted for external wall insulation for our solid-wall semi.

It makes me gnash my teeth that something comparatively cheap to do at the building stage is just being ignored.

In what way are we not in a position to be choosy about the quality of new housing, SaucyJack?

Is that a joke? Go and ask a battered wife living in a homeless hostel whether she wants to be choosy about the energy rating of the council property she'll have been waiting months for

I was saying exactly the same thing to DH yesterday as we drove past some new-build houses. To not spend the additional £20k per household is just lining the pockets of the developers to the detriment of future generations. Developers on the whole will do anything to shirk their responsibilities to the community. YANBU.

What on earth are you talking about, Saucy?

I'm talking about building regulations affecting all new builds in the country, private and social.

There's no connection to the sell-off of council housing stock over the last two decades. Or the failure of councils and HAs to build replacement housing in the same period, to any standard never mind a high one.

Or indeed the failure of developers building for private sale to build to a high standard.

Most people simply aren't aware of the standard houses can reach, so the developers get away without offering it.

Of course, we can vote with our cheque-books. If the new-build isn't energy-efficient, we don't have to buy it. Appliance manufacturers have realised this and sticker their products up with their AA ratings and so on. They know it's a good selling point.

Actually, now I think about it, there is a connection to council house sell off. (Still no connection to a battered woman sitting in a refuge.)

The most efficient way to retrofit is to do a large number of similar houses on the same site at the same time. Efficiencies of scale plus fewer detailing issues at property boundaries.

The owners most likely to
a) have such a collection of properties
b) have an interest in serving their tenants longterm rather than maximising profits today
c) have a budget to spend on longterm improvements

are local authorities and housing associations.

Which explains why someone wanting to do an article about passivhauses found one built by a social housing group. It was that or Grand Designs type self-builds and lifestyle concept houses. Very little in the commercial market in between.

Its The Guardian - I'd like to see some neutral viewpoints, not just the good points!

They're generally 10% more expensive than typical builds. There is one for sale near me for £800,000. It hasn't sold in 6 months. Its a self build.

I think the planning system in this country is pretty awful anyway; by zoning, it encourages big mass new build developments by big developers and therefore poor quality, lack of individuality and adherence to building regulations which are already based on the ability of the big developers to meet them.

Pass law requiring 20% of new builds to be self builds and not only would it make housing more affordable, but average build quality would go up.

Great idea.
Bit stuffed if your boiler goes up it.

I think we should go further and all new builds should be energy self sufficient (possibly even paying back into the grid too if enough excess is done)
The extra costs initially would certainly pay out over the lifetime of the property, even the lifetime of the mortgage, and its not as if its not achievable. A mix of rainwater harvesting for grey water, solar and wind, possibly heat exchange, passivehouse for insulation. Utilise newbuilds to take the pressure off the grid. Maybe estates to have their own mini digester to deal with waste as well.
But of course the Big Six wouldnt want that would they......

I also think sustainable self builds or co-op builds should be pushed to the fore in planning law- totally agree. And low impact building. AND (a big bug bear of mine) individual self build viewed in the same light as the big building companies. They often get stuff through for a whole estate when an individual would not be able to build one house.

I can see the energy companies hating this idea and working hard to stop this type of engineering.

many new housing estates could be built with carbon neutral houses costing pennies to run - but councils never seem to want to insist on making the the builders work in the way

I also dont see why the councils / housing associations didnt take advantage on the pay in taffiffs which were available for solar/wind to plaster all their properties with solar/wind/any other energy type. They could have done a deal with the tenants where they got free energy and the housing associations got the pay in, which they could then have invested in their housing stock.

What on earth are you talking about, Saucy?

What on Earth do you mean, what do I mean?

These houses cost far more money, time and expertise than normal houses do to build. And seeing as we (as a country) do not have limitless resources, I am simply trying to point out what the ramifications would actually be for the 1000s of people who are already desperately waiting for any housing at all up and down the country if social housing providers were forced to build them instead of normal new builds.

Nobody said anything about pre-existing houses being sold off.

The article states passivhauses can be built for only £20K more than a non-passivhaus. And no, they don't take "far more" time and expertise than a normal house - just a small amount.

Any difference in cost and time of building passivhauses is less than the difference in cost between postcodes and time it can take to get planning permission for a new development.

And you're right, we don't have limitless resources. Which is why both for the country and the occupants, passivhauses are much better than normal heat-leakers.

The comparatively small additional initial outlay starts repaying itself from day one of occupancy. The "battered woman living in a refuge" has £450 a year extra in her pocket if she's moved to a passivhaus not postwar concrete prefab (we have council houses like that round here, too, and I'm nowhere near Oldham).

Seriously, what's not to like?

I tell a lie. the Estimated £450 saving is on an existing house retrofitted with insulation and new boiler, not a PH.

The cost of living in a PH compared to living in a concrete house is £20 compared to well over £2000, going from the first paragraph.

So a saving of 99% on fuel bills (but to be adjusted as the £2000 didn't cover winter but might have included showers/cooking, if we're being precise here).

Building regulations are not being rolled back. It gets harder and harder every year to comply with the thermal regulations set by this government who aim to get every new build being carbon zero within the next few years. Also the costs being put to this are nonsense. Renewable energy sources are extremely costly (although most new builds do incorporate it in some form), until the upfront costs are reduced it will not become as common place as we would all like.

These matters are far more complicated than a newspaper article would have you believe.

Renewable energy sources are not the same as passivhaus (though the both can be used on the same project).

A passivhaus aims not to use energy in the first place.

And yes, that means working hard to conform to thermal regulations. In the same way that electrical safety means working hard to conform to elec regs.

I absolutely agree, they should all have solar panels and reuse rain water for toilets at the very least.
But than maybe the 'businesses' that are the energy companies would object to loosing money and we can't have that can we

Passivhaus Trust, for anyone interested. (They're quoting 75% reduction in space heating costs over current UK new build standards.)

Also NHBC on Passivhauses.

BTW, I've been following the use of PHs off and on for years. IIRC, one of the big challenges is ensuring that tradespeople work to standard and don't cut corners. This makes large-scale builds challenging, but isn't a reason not to do it.