The recent push to retrofit insulation in Britain’s houses – slammed by green groups as the coldest and draughtiest in Europe – counterintuitively is likely to dramatically worsen living conditions, says Aris Roussinos in UnHerd. Here’s an excerpt:
Around 25% of Britain’s housing stock was built before 1919, the highest proportion in Europe. These houses were built according to time-tested techniques to manage the ambient moisture of Britain’s Atlantic climate through air flow – that is, the very draughts we now spend money attempting to eradicate. Air-permeable lime mortar between brick and masonry and lime plaster on the walls allowed moisture from within the home to evaporate outside, much like a high-tech wicking fabric. Draughty single-pane glazing allowed air to circulate, preventing the build-up of mould: the problem of heating draughty houses was efficiently solved by the simple, if now unfashionable expedient of burning vast amounts of wood, and later coal in open fires.
But after WWI, when many skilled tradesmen had been killed in the trenches, housebuilders adopted the newly-introduced solution of gypsum-brd plasters and cement mortar, as cheaper and quicker to work with. Because both are impermeable to moisture, houses began to be constructed with air cavities and external vents or air bricks for circulation. Over time, the old skills were lost, and houses built before 1919 – perhaps including yours – were renovated with impermeable gypsum plaster, and overlaid with non-breathable plastic-BRD paint.
Draughty windows were replaced with sealed double-glazing and chimneys were bricked up in favour of central heating, reducing air flow further. The result was an explosion of damp in British homes, and whole new industries of damp-proof courses and chemical injections – none of which work – aiming to resolve the newly-introduced problem. …
What’s the solution? Short of demolishing and rebuilding a quarter of Britain’s housing stock – often the most valuable and desired British homes – government grants wasted on introducing damp problems where they had never existed would be better spent on retraining tradesmen in traditional breathable techniques.
Worth reading in full.
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Great photo well done. When I work from home, that is often myself with my cat at least for a few hours. We are mandated to be in the office 2 days a week (IT large bank). Many of us go 3 times or more occasionally.
There is absolutely no doubt from own experience that you are far more productive in an office. I don’t buy the WFH productivity bullshit. The only savings is travel- time to travel and related costs which are significant.
I would be in the office 4-5 days/wk (1 hr 15 min public transport commute), bar the very significant transport costs (often unpaid by firms). This is maybe the excuse used by the uncivil serpents.
Totally agree. I found the train journey good for reading or having a snooze but it would depend on how reliable your service is. I had to laugh when I read this morning that nationalising the rail companies was to focus on delivering for the passengers when there was me thinking the railways are run for the benefit of the unions overpaid and underworked members. I worked for London councils as a direct and indirect employee and both provided a season ticket purchase service so the annual cost was spread over the year.
I am way more productive at home for various reasons
Our firm ranges from 100% home to 100% office and all shades in between and I have noticed no pattern to how productive people are based on where they work
I too am more productive WFH because I’m not being constantly interrupted by others needing to access the single computer owned by the garage for which I do bookkeeping. I go in as they close on a Saturday, take a back up, bring it home, do my work and return a fresh back up before they open on Monday morning. Better than freezing to death, exhaust fumes, interruptions by mechanics who need to access data and those pesky customers!!!!
Indeed. Our office is too noisy for me but suits others.
Every business should choose what works best, but I do feel that insisting people go to offices is partly motivated by bored bosses, partly by a desire to fill expensive office space, and lazy managers and lazy thinking that says if you are at a desk in an office you are producing something. I would much rather see a focus on productivity from each individual, not on where they happen to do their work.
It depends on your role. My son is a software developer and he could concentrate on his work better at home rather than with colleagues interrupting him. Yes, he took time out to do the school run but he more than made up for that at other times of the day. Now he’s moved into management, obviously he has to go to the office more often
I manage people remotely and it seems to work – a manager should be looking at work produced, not presence at a desk. Of course if personal, in-person interactions are very important to a role then that is what should be done.
There needs to be a culture of ‘getting the job done’ for the employer to get the benefit of working from home. Some organisations have it – many do not.
I feel that “working from home” (i.e. doing some work in between all the distractions of home life) leads to lower productivity. As a self-employed freelance translator, I’m familiar with all the things that can tempt you away from your desk, but I also know that I have to be self-disciplined if I want to earn money. If I were on a fixed salary, that incentive would not be there.
I would normally deplore that loss of productivity in the public sector, but I’m actually quite cheered by the drop in productivity of the Net Zero crowd. The less they do to mess up life for the rest of us, the happier we’ll be.
I don’t know why this would surprise anyone, especially if you are a sad person like me who enjoys watching property programmes. During the COVID fiasco, they were full of London and other large town based civil servants who were moving out of the cities for a new life, because they were able to work from home now. These included local authority employees who, it seemed, were able to relocate hundreds of miles away from their employing council. None of these can want to return to their offices having spent so much to get away from them and they can’t have been isolated cases the TV production crews stumbled across.
Don’t judge others by your low standards. Some people enjoy the satisfaction of getting the job done free from distractions from colleagues just wanting to chat and endless unproductive meetings