Roger Bryant:

As others on here have said the real problem is Britain's housing design and expectations. Individual houses with solid or possibly cavity walls are not a good start.  If you look at the continental building styles, especially in the colder lands, multiple occupancy homes are the norm. This immediately reduces the surface area to volume ratio. Our apartment has two external surfaces. The other 4 surface are 'insulated' by other apartments.


The structure is usually a mixture of brick and concrete (wood in some areas) with a thick external layer of insulation (20-30cm) and then a hard waterproof skin. This allow the heavy structure to act as a heat buffer (in summer and winter)


Heating is usually by a wood or oil fired boiler serving all the apartments or sometimes a link to  a district heating scheme. A bigger boiler is generally more efficient, once again a better surface area to volume ratio.


How could we acheive something like this in Britain? Could we move peoples mindsets away from my home is my castle? Could we change the various building regulations to encourage an efficient build?

People in Britain want houses.  There's a "pecking order" with detached houses being the most desirable, then semi-detached houses, terraced houses, and flats at the bottom.  The terrible leasehold system in England really doesn't help with that (I believe Scotland has a better system).


House builders are only interested in knocking out estates full of standard houses of "traditional" build - i.e. brick cavity walls.  It's what they know how to do, and they can build them quickly and cheaply.


There's a lot of suspicion of district heating systems.  We have a regulator that controls the price of electricity and natural gas, but nothing else.  If you're on a district heating system, you have to pay whatever bills they choose to charge, with no say in how it's run.

Roger Bryant:

As others on here have said the real problem is Britain's housing design and expectations. Individual houses with solid or possibly cavity walls are not a good start.  If you look at the continental building styles, especially in the colder lands, multiple occupancy homes are the norm. This immediately reduces the surface area to volume ratio. Our apartment has two external surfaces. The other 4 surface are 'insulated' by other apartments.


The structure is usually a mixture of brick and concrete (wood in some areas) with a thick external layer of insulation (20-30cm) and then a hard waterproof skin. This allow the heavy structure to act as a heat buffer (in summer and winter)


Heating is usually by a wood or oil fired boiler serving all the apartments or sometimes a link to  a district heating scheme. A bigger boiler is generally more efficient, once again a better surface area to volume ratio.


How could we acheive something like this in Britain? Could we move peoples mindsets away from my home is my castle? Could we change the various building regulations to encourage an efficient build?

People in Britain want houses.  There's a "pecking order" with detached houses being the most desirable, then semi-detached houses, terraced houses, and flats at the bottom.  The terrible leasehold system in England really doesn't help with that (I believe Scotland has a better system).


House builders are only interested in knocking out estates full of standard houses of "traditional" build - i.e. brick cavity walls.  It's what they know how to do, and they can build them quickly and cheaply.


There's a lot of suspicion of district heating systems.  We have a regulator that controls the price of electricity and natural gas, but nothing else.  If you're on a district heating system, you have to pay whatever bills they choose to charge, with no say in how it's run.