Cold Comfort
It was after dreaming about my family dying of exposure in an Alaskan snowdrift that I decided my insulation really needed attention. I've recently moved to a house I am very happy with in every aspect apart from one: it's cold. And I mean, very cold. It is fantastically cold, in fact, the kind of cold that creeps up your neck and hurts your scalp, requiring hot water bottles and woolly hats and multiple cardigans just to get through the evening.
The reason for this, according to Lex Deak, is because my house is "very leaky". By which he means that however effective the heating system - and there are plenty of large radiators - heat flees my house with gleeful enthusiasm, seeking out the gaps at the windows and the chinks around the pipes and the pockets in the bricks and making a giddy, whooshing break for freedom. So leaky is my house, it turns out, that my total draughts are equivalent to a sash window left open with a 40cm gap all the time. No wonder I'm shivering.
Lex knows this, because along with his colleague Geoff Keys he has spent several hours with electronic measuring devices, thermal cameras and whizzy computer software working out how green is my house. Answer: not very. Out of 100, my small, early 20th century dwelling scores 41 for energy efficiency - by comparison, a standard new-build home would rate about 80. It's not just the draughts, it's the state of the house's insulation (almost non-existent) and the generation of my boiler (elderly) and the make of my inherited light bulbs (old-fashioned and energy-thirsty). When it comes to carbon emissions the house does even worse, scoring just 36 out of 100. On the A to G scale, with A the best, that makes it an F. I would feel ashamed if I could only feel my fingers.
It would be enough to make you despair - both about the state of the planet and the warmth of my bathroom - but that is not how the London Development Agency (LDA) sees it. The agency has sponsored a new scheme to help Londoners reduce their energy leaks by providing both the technical detail about their own home's energy usage and, uniquely, the highly attentive support they may need to help them to actually do something about it.
Which is where Lex and Geoff come in. As "home energy advisers" for the Green Homes Concierge Service scheme, their job is to assess a home, then look at the changes its owner might consider making, and how much energy and CO2 - and of course money - that could save. Geoff calculates, for instance, that were I to double-glaze my rattling sash windows I could save £42 a year on heating bills, and reduce my CO2 emissions by 2.75% a year. Not bad, but simply by having low-energy light bulbs throughout the house I would save £17 a year and 1.21% of my carbon. The big winner for me, though, would be installing internal insulation. Adding insulated plaster-board or a flexible thermal wall lining (like 60% of inner London houses, mine was built without cavity walls) could save me up to £154 a year on heating bills and reduce my CO2 emissions by 28.93%. Not to mention - thrilling prospect! - making the house very much warmer.
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