10 Retrofit Lessons in (just) one year

As Chapter 2 Architects celebrates its first anniversary, here are 10 lessons from (just) one year as a retrofit professional.

1. People think their homes are well insulated - generally, they are not. Discomfort has become normalised over generations. This is a British phenomenon.

2. There’s a lot of willingness to retrofit amongst the so-called ‘able to pay’ market but they need their enthusiasms directed towards the most appropriate measures. There’s a vibrant underground network educating themselves about products and practices. (I'll teach you the secret handshake).

3. If a homeowner is motivated to retrofit, and you present them a list of easy wins, they get on with it. Like, straight away. Just think how many easy wins we have across 28 million UK homes and what a difference these would make?

4. In the private domestic market, design is a luxury rather than a necessity. This would never happen in the commercial world where full design upfront and pre-construction management is used to de-risk the construction process and manage quality.

5. Every home has a bit of mould, a damp wall, a reoccurring leak, a draughty window …you are not alone! No house is perfect is begin with.

6. Most homes I’ve visited are poorly ventilated with a lack of background ventilation and over reliance on uncontrolled infiltration (leaks). Bathroom extracts are often noisy but ineffective at moving air, or routed through cold roof spaces.

7. Thermographic imaging has proven to be a great (& non-intrusive) way to identify gaps in insulation and leaks. It is evident that air sealing and thermal continuity at major junctions has not been standard building practice for the 20th Century (and beyond). If your prospective builder doesn’t know what a thermal bridge is, call another builder.

8. Passivhaus can be viewed with suspicion. Homeowners equate it to living in a hermetically sealed environment or quote the ‘you can’t open the windows’ myth. They find the delivery of heat via air and fans very un-British. We like our homes cold and stuffy thank you very much. Mercifully, many others hold it in high regard and want to know if it’s a good fit for them either now, or in their next house.

9. I’ve been carrying out audits on submissions to Trustmark. I've yet to see one use PHPP to derive Improvement Option Evaluation data. This implies that RCs come from the DEA pool rather than PH Designers, Architects or Technologists. We need a technically authored ‘how-to’ PHPP for Retrofit guidance document (I’m looking at you Passivhaus Trust) to make greater use of PHPP in PAS 2035 and close the performance gap.

10. Fabric First, Fabric Fifth, fabric never…. whatever. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but I’ve yet to see a home where significant fabric measures wouldn’t help go a long way towards greater comfort, lower bills and reductions in energy. So that’s where I start from, but not blinkered to other solutions.