Conferences and Open Houses

Recent feedback from the AECB conference in July was ‘best ever’ Was it quality of workshops, gathering of people, or the sunshine and tranquil green place? - probably all three. Practical workshop on airtightness was really appreciated as well as all the other varied sessions - I especially enjoyed hearing about growing timber to build with and the 'hutting' movement in NE Scotland, and as always, the talking! I can’t convey the noise level at dinner in this photo.

3 projects in Open House this year, 140 people came to visit Bateman Mews, the timber frame and shingle clad backwoods houses in Clapham. ATA and Metropolitan Housing Partnership (client) representatives didn’t pause all afternoon, and to the kind people at no 5 who welcomed visitors in, thank you!

At the Ecohub in Lordship park, the Hub was open as part of the community festival in Lordship Rec where well over 1,000 people came along: -

'On Saturday September 20th there was a lovely village atmosphere as crowds turned out to enjoy and join in a range of exciting, enthralling, informative, lively, fun and empowering community activities in various parts of the Rec. This year's event - on World Parks Day 2014 - was once again organised by and for local people. It showcased the talent in Tottenham, and the efforts and determination of so many groups to promote community spirit, initiative and empowerment’.

Many came to the Hub and everyone is so pleased it is finally open. The Friends of Lordship Rec have formed a co-op to manage the building,  with cafe and community room in daily use. A mystery donor made the final donation which secured the building’s future. Drop in anytime Hub Cafe open daily 12 - 6pm. http://lordshiprec.org.uk/

At the straw house in Norfolk, local people came along to see what progress we had made since last summer’s buzz of strawbaling, and we were pleased they thought we’d done lots. Several people commented on the light and soft feel inside from the wood and clay and straw, but my best quote came from a 9 year old who wrote  ‘amazing :) this is a house of marvles!!! I would definetly want to live in a house like this, who wouldn’t?

We’ve moved in although loads more to do, lots of people have joined in the building work inside, and special thanks to Kaspar for plumbing and solar thermal and to Akwele for all the painting. Hot baths and clean painted rooms make all the ongoing work enjoyable. A recent piece of work was the pergola for the solar panels, just ready now (at summer’s end) to be connected up. The timberwork also acts as gutter, with a triangular fillet and bitumen paint, although no down pipe yet.

Passivhaus Conference is on October 16th at Stevenage, with great speakers Sebastian Moreno-Vacca from Brussels and Jessica Grove-Smith from the Passivhaus Insitut in Germany, and what looks to be an excellent technical workshop on the 15th, hope to see you there!
http://www.ukpassivhausconference.org.uk/

58 Thermal Images at Eco Hub

Many many thanks go to our AECB friend, Andrew Pratt at RETANE Thermal Images. He has come over to the Eco Hub with his thermal image camera. The thermal images can identify inconsistency on the thermal envelop. 

The contrast could be because of the construction geometry, which nothing is wrong to have, moisture content, emissivity, reflected temperature, atmospheric temperature, distance, heat loss at air/moisture leaks, or missing insulation. The building was not heated for a long enough period (just 8 hours almost for the first time. A heavier structure had not had time to heat up yet) so that it will be very useful to take images again soon at the same positions, well, at 58 locations! The room temperature was just 18.5 degrees. Outside was 9.9 degrees.
Thank you for your detailed advice too, Andrew!
- Junko

The Retro-Expo Awards 2012 report

Cath Jordan from Sanctuary Housing and Simon Thompson from Seddons, the contractors, joined Fran Bradshaw of ATA at the Retro-Expo awards on the 31st October, to celebrate 23 St Luke Street retrofit as a finalist for the Domestic Retrofit Project of the Year award.

This is the first year of the Expo Retro and the Awards, which were introduced by Birmingham City Councillor who reminded people what retrofit is doing in terms of making people's lives more comfortable as well as lowering energy bills.

Awards for innovation included a heat recovery Passivent system, and I was delighted that Penny Poysner - who introduced the AECB summer conference - and her partner Gill Sholom won the DECC pioneer award - for long term contribution to low carbon retrofit.

The AECB stall was buzzing as ever, and it was clearly the first ExpoRetro of many!

AECB conference 2012

Detailed and wide ranging workshops featured at the annual AECB conference this year, as well as the best opportunity to meet up with the most knowledgable green people around. Having been involved in organising it, I still managed to enjoy it enormously - the only problem was wanting to go to workshops that were happening at the same time!

On the wide ranging, I heard Blanche Cameron from Resit talking about unusual partnerships for change, she had some great examples of action where one would least expect it - and Chris Baines also talked about working on the Elephant scheme to retain a huge mature tree canopy as a starting point for redevelopment while Neil May talked about an 'uncertainty principle' approach to retrofit.

On the detail, some great discussion of ventilation from Mark Siddall and WARM Associates, retrofit and dealing with moisture by Andy Simmons among others. It will all be on the website soon, so do go and have a look at those you missed.

Have a look at the AJ's Footptint blog on this year's conference.

The Passivhaus masterclass on saturday with Wolfgang Feist was also a great success.
Thanks to Nick for the picture!
Fran