How should we go about making old houses energy efficient without devaluing future sustainability or the appeal and character of old homes by the use of inappropriate solutions?
This practical and essential guide to retrofitting for energy efficiency seeks to provide answers to this and other the questions homeowners of old houses are asking. Whether your house is medieval and timber-framed or a Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian terrace, it can be made more energy efficient and sustainable, and this practical and comprehensive handbook will show you how.
Revised and updated throughout, Old House Eco Handbook includes chapters on the building envelope; roofs and ceilings; windows and doors; walls; floors; paints; energy, airandwater; plus a brand newchapter on retrofit materials.
In association with The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, this is a must have for owners of old houses looking to make their homes more energy efficient and sustainable.
The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
Foreword by Kevin McCloud
Advisory Note
Preface
1. Old houses can be green
2. Old house to eco house
3. The building envelope
4. Retrofit materials
5. Roofs and ceilings
6. Windows and doors
7. Walls
8. Floors
9. Paints
10. Energy, air and water
11. Old house for the future
Acknowledgements & Picture credits
Index
Marianne Suhr is a Chartered Building Surveyor specialising in the repair of historic buildings. After a scholarship with the SPAB, she worked for seven years in architectural practice, then full-time on hands-on repair projects including three very different old houses. For the SPAB she has run over 40 homeowners’ courses and numerous ‘limedays’. She is co-author (with Roger Hunt) of Old House Handbook, and has written and lectured extensively. A co-presenter of three series of BBC2’s Restoration, she recently set up the Old House Consultancy, advising on repairs and alterations in the Oxfordshire locality.
Roger Hunt, co-author (with Marianne Suhr) of Old House Handbook, is an award-winning writer and blogger with a particular interest in sustainable and vernacular architecture and the materials and techniques used in construction. He is the author of Rural Britain: Then and Now, a celebration of the British countryside, Villages of England and Hidden Depths, an archaeological exploration of Surrey’s past. He lectures on building-related issues, is a judge of annual awards for new housing and serves on the editorial board of the SPAB magazine. His latest renovation project is a 1900 house on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA.