A global archive of independent reviews of everything happening from the beginning of the millennium
For publication dates click here
Read our Copyright Notice click here
Pierre Marcolini, haute chocolaterie & tea room,
near the Bourla theatre, Antwerp
Olympic rings, Menton lemon festival 2024
Top floor, cool inside, no need for aircon
*****
[1]
Ephemeral comments:
The government's insulation programme has extremely poor public takeup for well understood technical reasons.
It has not been some villainous politician sabotaging it.
The kind of insulation used, predominantly of foam or plastic composition, which gives off toxic fumes when alight, is not hung up on by any advanced nation other than Britain. Indeed, it is prohibited by many.
(Stripped out materials)
Can the grey sliver protect the insulation foam from fire, even when exposed through shoddy workmanship, even in a lithium battery fire - the latest post-Grenfell risk?
It might work well insulating an industrial unit's refrigeration block but that is not what is in play.
You can just about trust new housebuilders to embed it safely, provided you keep it out of cladding, but getting it installed securely in retrofit is quite another matter.
Most of the firms wanting to install will not meet the certification standards required by the civil service and those that do will triple the resultant cost to the consumer because even with meeting the standards the legal liabilities are very open ended.
Firms seem even reluctant to take on the remedying of defecting cladding and, for the low grade work of retrofit, the building labour simply does not exist. Most labour gangs for construction work are made up of continental Europeans.
If you amortise the carbon cost of retrofit work across 15 years you still do not get carbon savings, except for (non-flammable) mineral wool roof insulation, and moving families out of their rented accommodation for two months is not desirable.
The money earmarked for the flawed and failing insulation programme would more than pay for the pensioners' winter fuel allowance, keeping them warm in the here and now.
Passing legislation that dumps responsibilities on the building owner may relieve the civil service of some liability but it does not address all the truth.
In tall HMOs the hot air often rises to the topmost floors in summer. In flats with mainy southerly or southwesterly aspect this can produce a risk to life in summer.
This type of insulation traps the hot air inside and opening the windows in hot direct sun makes no positive difference.
In the Mediterranean, and even in a latitude across Europe just below Paris, solid masonry walls are used. They absorb the heat during the day and let it out in the cooler nights when it might be needed. The walls absorb cold from the night air and keep the building cool during the day.
Many people agree that Victorian houses in southern England and stone buildings further north can do this very well. Sash windows that still open also facilitate convection, as did open chimneys.
Many, we can attest, use very little heating or cooling input as a result and their carbon budgets could be brought to near balance by a small grant for solar panels only.
With PVC windows and the subdivision of properties for rental purposes we do, of course, have new problems and more occupiers die of stifling heat in summer than cold in winter.
Convection and natural cooling, demonised as a sign of 'leaky homes' by the unqualified, tends to be preferable to airtighness.
Airtight homes with their bacteriological problems, mould, smells and condensation troubles are going to make things worse and push people into using energy intensive electric air conditioning.
20 years of building deregulation, mainly via Building Regulations, has paradoxically over-regulated on energy measures, to very minimal positive effect, whilst moving to under-regulating the fire safety of building materials and buildings.
At first Londoners thought they would escape the worst because they had the London Building Acts that imposed additional safety requirements but they, too, were removed despite London having most of the tall buildings until recently.
It is improbable that the Grenfell project would have proceeded in the manner it did had the provisions of the Acts been in place.
WELCOME to the FOOD pages of WORLD REVIEWS!
Pablo Picasso, Still Life of Octopi and Cuttlefish, 1946
We have the following recipes and reviews in this section:
FOOD0002/0821 click here for:
NOSHING AT NIGHT IN MELBOURNE
Reviewed by EREZ GORDON
FOOD0004/0125 click here for:
MANGE 2
Reviewed by MARTIN CALDWELL
FOOD0005/1115 click here for:
THÉ CHING WO
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
FOOD0003/0322 click here for:
CHICKEN MARENGO
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
FOOD0001/0920 click here for:
CORN OYSTERS
Written by ELIZA LESLIE, 1846, Philadelphia, U.S.A.
FOOD0006/0718 click here for:
TOMATES SOSNO
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
FOOD0007/0120 click here for:
PINA FLAMENCA
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
FOOD0008/0322 click here for:
MENTON LEMON FESTIVAL 2022
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
Day of the Triffids approaches - the pineapple keeps growing