Tim Burrell

Tim is Carpenter Oak & Woodland’s managing director. Tim has extensive experience of managing companies of all sizes, in many business sectors, including construction and building. Tim’s no-nonsense hands-on approach, coupled with his outstanding management experience and commercial acumen, make him the ideal complement to the craft-based skills of the rest of the team.

---

Previous posts

• Timber Supply for Oak Frame Houses
• Timber frame for supermarkets
• The quandary of externally exposed oak frames
• Oak frame and building budget
• Infill panels and building warranty

---

|

Subscribe to this feed

---

By Tim Burrell

I’ve just been to the EcoBuild event at Earls Court London, where I was keen to hear of the latest thinking on Zero Carbon. A couple of things struck me.

The first, and I guess to me, the most obvious impression is that while new technologies, and new knowledge have come to the fore, it hasn’t really made the route to eco building any clearer. I attended seminars where the speakers seemed to be ignoring some pretty major issues – eg concrete is good because it has high thermal mass (isn’t this like saying that chocolate is a good food stuff because it’s easy to carry round?!), and some speakers even seemed to be confused and contradicting themselves. What they all had in common was that they stated that this was a complex area. One speaker pointed out that while the sustainability debate had moved on from simply discussing low embodied energy to now including the importance of low energy in use as well, a whole raft of other factors such as social responsibility, damage to the wider environment, toxicity levels in the building etc had been ignored, when it’s just not appropriate to do so.

My view, from attending this event, is that basically a number of vested interests have sought to make a case for their positive attributes while sweeping the negatives under the carpet (the case for concrete is a prime example). This means that if we take all we’re told on face value, everything has eco credentials. From a small self builder to a specifier for a major project, at present, it’s still all really unhelpful.

So here’s my take. If we wanted to be ultimately environmentally responsible, we simply wouldn’t build anything else, so perhaps we should just stop trying to fool ourselves and get more pragmatic here by using some simple rules:

1. Don’t build larger than you need
2. Use materials that are sustainable, non toxic, have low embodied energy, and if possible from local sources. BIG HINT – USE TIMBER!!!
3. Design well, taking into account solar gain, proper detailing, and specify high levels of natural insulation.
4. Reduce your energy consumption by the use of heat exchangers, PVs, wind turbines, pellet stoves, or whatever suits your circumstances, if at all possible.

The above probably won’t get you ‘Zero Carbon’ or Code 6, but will give you a healthy home that could with justifiably be called an environmentally responsible home. And that’s far more useful than having everyone so confused by the conflicting messages that we all decide that it’s too complicated and then end up doing nothing.

I’m not an expert, but as you’ll probably know, it doesn’t stop me giving my opinion!