by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
On Saturday April 25, 2009, Kevin McCloud launched the Grand Designs Great British Refub Campaign, and such a campaign certainly does not come before its time.
While building new green energy efficient homes is fine and good we must look at refurbishing the existing housing stock in Britain, whether private, private rented or public, and retrofitting them to be green and energy efficient. It can be done and we MUST do it and do it NOW.
Far too much energy has been expended – though we have heard little of them recently – as to the development of the so-called “eco-towns” and no one even considered the retrofitting of existing housing stock and other building to make them green rather than building new places in the middle of nowhere often.
We should not even as much as consider the building of such “eco-towns” until we have not refurbished and retrofitted all existing buildings in this country to a proper green standard.
In many cases this should have been done a long, long time ago. To this day many council homes do not, for instance, have double glazing and such like and they thus waste energy.
I have seen even the older blocks of flats that still have the iron window frames of around World War II and just thereafter and which cannot, with the best will, be seen as energy efficient. Those windows, as all single glazed, transmit much of the heat generated by whatever heating in the house to the outside and the biggest mistake was made in the 1960s and on from that time when windows were made bigger and bigger and thus the area through which heat could escape to the outside also became ever larger.
If the UK is really serious about fulfilling the targets that it set itself as to reduction of CO2 emissions and such then we need not play with the “” idea but we must green our existing villages, towns and cities, by refurbishing and retrofitting the existing buildings to make them “green” and we must do that in a hurry.
If we don't not only will Britain not meet the set targets; we are wasting energy needlessly and this can no longer be allowed.
The time to act is now. Let's go and refurbish the country and retrofit ever home and business to make them as energy efficient as at all possible.
The Grand Designs Great British Refub Campaign must be allowed to succeed or our future may look rather bleak.
© 2009
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The Great British Refurb Campaign
