CONTEXT 182 : DECEMBER 2024 21 HEATING & VENTILATION ROBYN PENDER, AMY GRAHAM and KATIE STEELE A people-first approach to retrofit We now have the opportunity and knowledge to help homeowners and building managers move away from the destructive paradigm of air temperature and fabric-first retrofit. It is surprisingly easy to show that indoor air temperature is a poor guide to thermal comfort and one that encourages maladaptation.1 Nonetheless, temperature is currently the unquestioned starting point of all Global North definitions of healthy and useable building environments. The unfortunate outcomes of this paradigm have been many. To control air temperature sustainably, building envelopes must be sealed and heavily insulated. Alas, ‘fabric-first’ action of this type leads to problems with both comfort and indoor air quality, and to carbon-expensive failures of materials and structures. Since the industrial revolution, buildings have become markedly less healthy for their occupants,² a problem that has accelerated since the 1960s. As the climate warms, fabric-first retrofit risks causing dangerous overheating, especially in cities. Worse, despite the great quantities of fossil-fuel energy that have been devoted to it, ‘comfort’ has proved elusive. Over all this hangs the awful legacy of applying combustible insulated cladding to the outside of residential buildings, as highlighted by the Grenfell disaster. Fortunately, the pre-carbon past and vernacular practice in the Global South provide us with many cheap and demonstrably effective tools for constructing and operating buildings in ways that are comfortable and healthy for all occupants and all uses, and which at the same time use little or no energy.³ To this tried-and-tested toolbox from pre-carbon history we can now add some useful ‘post-carbon’ ideas: from familiar and effective older inventions such as vertically sliding sash windows and awnings, to modern innovations such as acrylic glazing, ceiling fans or safe ways to ‘heat the person, not the building’. If those tools that do require some operational energy can be powered from renewable sources, we immediately unleash enormous potential for rapid, effective and safe climate action, all at little cost in terms of either money or carbon. Field research has already conclusively shown that many occupants of historic buildings do become adept at ‘sailing their buildings’, finding clever ways to make their homes or offices work for their particular needs.⁴ Unfortunately in the Global North even the most thoughtful of these building managers lack some fundamental knowledge of buildings and comfort – knowledge that was once ubiquitous. For most professionals, the problem of ‘unknown unknowns’ is even more acute: almost nothing is currently taught of either history or firstprinciples science. Thus the category error around air temperature that underpins current approaches to operating and retrofitting buildings goes unrecognised, and unaddressed.⁵ It is imperative for us to start making this knowledge commonplace once again. How can this be done, especially given the current dominance of market-centred narratives around retrofit? What information is needed to support occupants and managers as they learn to ‘sail’ their buildings? Specifically, how do we give people the confidence to trust their own senses over a thermometer, and to confidently choose people-centred options for supporting the ways Comfort varies from one person to another according to age, attire, level of activity, air-movement, humidity and many other factors, of which temperature is just one. (All photos and images: Cheribim Ltd) 1 Pender, Robyn (2024) ‘Climate action: comfort is a crucial missing piece of the puzzle’, IHBC Yearbook. ² Pallubinsky, H., Kramer, R.P., van Marken Lichtenbelt, W.D. (2023) ‘Establishing resilience in times of climate change: a perspective on humans and buildings’, Climate Change, Vol.176. ³ ‘Climate action: comfort is a crucial missing piece of the puzzle’ (ibid). ⁴ Wise, Freya, Moncaster, Alice, and Jones, Derek (2021) ‘Rethinking retrofit of residential heritage buildings’, Buildings and Cities, Vol. 2, No.1. ⁵ Pender, R. and Lemieux, D.J. (2020) ‘The road not taken: building physics, and returning to first principles in sustainable design’, Atmosphere 11.
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