Gwynne Anthony 2020

ART506 Dissertation 2019. Anthony Gwynne . 85 7.0 Solutions to the problems 7.1 Do nothing One way to avoid some of the problems and unintended consequences detailed in sections 4, 5 and 6 may be to decide not to undertake the new works (e.g. to do nothing). However, with Governments driving net zero carbon targets by 2050 and making changes to legislation for improved insulation standards with no distinction between performance standards for retrofit and newbuild (Green et al. 2019), to do nothing is not an option. This is particularly important when considering how pre 1919 solid walled vapour permeable buildings are to be upgraded to insulation standards well above those of today. As already seen in section 4, to achieve todays U-value of 0.3 for upgrading existing building walls already requires at least 150mm thickness of vapour permeable insulation which could be far more if we have to achieve net zero carbon reduction with no distinction between retrofit and new build. The additional thickness of insulation would be impractical and to use thinner more energy efficient non-vapour permable insulations on vapour permeable construction would cause disastrous consequences already discussed in section 4. 7.2 Make changes to the Approved Documents Making changes to the Approved Documents to the Building Regulations, by the addition of more guidance for traditional, historic and listed buildings. For example, each Approved Document could have a paragraph included under the heading of ‘ General guidance’ at the front of the document as follows: