BBC Radio presenter Adrian Goldberg has said it would be amazing for Birmingham if zero carbon house could be the model for homes everywhere.
The broadcaster was talking to owners John Christophers and Jo Hindley on a visit to their Balsall Heath home for the BBD Radio 4 Open Country programme Visions of Birmingham.
Here’s a transcript of the end of the feature:
John Christophers:
…the new albion, the new England, should be full of zero carbon houses…
Adrian Goldberg:
It is a fantastic house. I like the house where I live; but I must say if this house came onto the market I’d be very tempted to buy it.
But again, you don’t want it to be the only house, and it would be amazing for Birmingham, wouldn’t it, if Birmingham could say: this is the model?
Not every house is going to be the same, not every house is going to have the same wishes and designs as you, but what you’ve done here: wouldn’t it be amazing if Birmingham said, we’ve got something original, something inspirational, in our midst?
If it can be done in Balsall Heath, we can do it anywhere!
John Christophers:
We need to go round all our old housing stock, insulate it to a very, very good standard, put solar panels on the roofs where they’re facing the right way, reduce the running cost of these houses dramatically, give skills, give jobs to people in these difficult times, and I think it could make a fantastic vision of a green city.
- To hear the programme on iPlayer go to: BBC Open Country Visions of Birmingham. The feature on zero carbon house begins 9 minutes and 27 seconds into the podcast.
CONGRATULATIONS TO JOHN AND JO on their real Achievements. PASSIVEHAUS TRUST says “Retrofitting existing buildings is undoubtedly a colossal challenge in transitioning the built environment to net zero. Even the majority of new homes built today are not nearly efficient enough, which means we will need to retrofit all 27 million homes, not just the older ones.”
“Yet net-zero is not enough AND there’s commercial buildings also to do. UK needs a new Mechanism for funding”, says Ian Greenwood, something of an expert in finance, engineering Ultra-Insulation and previous government adviser. Ian suggested way back that the Base rate slice of interest on all new money could be diverted to Green Measures such as Libraries, school education. Now he suggests differing base rates for different purposes starting with the Eco-Fit money as low as 1.5% ’20-year Money.’ That is, on the new money that commercial banks have been allowed to create (over 90% in recent decades). So UK-Gov needs to end the practice of “free” credit-created money starting with green-stimulus money, it could attract a modest charge. In that way base rates could come up straight away to 0.5% and a floor on savings rates regulated similarly alongside, a second step in raising well-being – by making THOROUGH GREEN DEAL AFFORDABLE. [Statistics show that property price growth was double the rate of inflation and savers and ordinary earners unable to get on. the property ladder missed out (thus) TWICE-OVER.] With such an adjustment to flows the whole economic system becomes clearer and more beneficially adjustable.
Thirdly, he commends to PassiveHouse People that condensation-free MultiFoils Should Figure More Highly on their website: “It is a no-brainer – there are massive leakages of warmth from within the fabric itself of buildings and our tests show that external wall insulation as shown on YBS website is trouble-free, condensation-free once done thoroughly, vapour-proof and Economical – super-thin for narrow alley-ways and wind-shielding possibilities (with set-back) between buildings that could be made link-detached and so share the extra space between them. 70 mm thick including cladding in place of more than 200 mm of warmth-leaky fibreglass or rockwool. I commend all this and the Finance “tweak” (as MeggittBird said) as a Major £40bn per year Project [UK-=wide] to governments: local, regional, national and across a more united world.”