residential weekend course sustainable home refurbishment

venue: Redfield Community, Bucks

The course is a definitive guide to the principles and practicalities of sustainably refurbishing most types of properties to minimise their carbon footprints, health and environmental impacts.

Three key selling points for the course:

• it takes you from low-cost quick wins through to advanced whole-building refurbishments, up to Passivhaus standards
• it includes a guide to all common insulation materials
• it applies the principles of eco-minimalism to achieve best results for least resource use, exposing some common 'green myths' in the process

A retro-fit offers many benefits: cutting electricity and heating bills, increasing the resale value of homes, slashing carbon emissions and creating a healthier place to live.  This course will kick you off to making it happen. Providing detailed, highly practical information, it moves from the quick wins to the full make-over, blowing away popular misconceptions in the process to see what really does make a difference in terms of value for money and carbon saving.

We will look at:

• draught-proofing, insulation and damp
• ventilation, heating and cooling
• electrical efficiency and renewable energy
• water use and re-use
• materials' life cycles and incorporating nature
• protection from climate change impacts
• modelling energy flows and embodied energy
• how we can meet the need to cut carbon emissions from dwellings by 80% by 2050
  

Projects can apply to apartment blocks, recent builds and older, solid-walled properties. Enlivened with case studies, plus plenty of pointers for further information, it provides a comprehensive starting point serious about efficiency (cash and carbon) savings.

Key topics include: airtightness; insulation materials; insulation strategies; going all the way - Towards Passivhaus; windows and doors; ventilation, cooling and heating; water management; electricity efficiency and supply; contextual issues.

David Thorpe lives in the Dyfi Valley, mid-Wales. He is the author of Sustainable Home Refurbishment: The Earthscan Expert Guide to Retrofitting Homes for Efficiency, and has been the news editor of Energy and Environmental Management magazine for ten years. Prior to that he was managing editor and author at the Centre for Alternative Technology, where he edited The Whole House Book among many other titles. He writes a popular blog – The Low Carbon Kid – and for the Guardian online.

dates: see 'book online' below

more on building & refurbishment

before
photo: Dave Baines

after
photo: Dave Baines

installing underfloor heating
photo: Russell Smith

installing natural insulation