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GHA Codes and Standards
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How should the GHA link to the Government's Code for Sustainable Homes (log in to subscribe to this post) |
| Should the GHA adopt the Government's Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) as its membership requirement? If so, should we adopt level 3 or level 4 as our starting point? |
| 30 Aug 2007 5:46 pm Jon Bootland, Sustainable Development Foundation |
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| Re: should the GHA adopt CSH |
| Hi Jon Obviously this is the politically attractive option as it's the way everyone is going but unless the Code is fundamentally changed, rather than tweaked to make it less wrong, then I have very strong reservations about designing to CSH. The issues I am aware of are water and energy, the main sections. Poor design is rewarded and the best designs currently built struggle to get a code rating at all as discussed here: www.goodhomes.org.uk/forum_post_show/152 IMHO CSH actually awards poor efficiency and penalises the most energy efficient buildings. I think we should be looking to standards that set targets for energy use per m2 useable floor area as does the German Passiv Haus Standard and AECB energy standards. Then optionally add low carbon energy supply but not instead of efficiency. I'm excited by the challenge of designing for real environmental improvement but not the game of finding loopholes to score points, currently at the cost of performance. Nick Grant NBT Consult |
| 15 Nov 2007 8:11 am , |
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