CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
stickyThose are listed buildings and there are plenty of timber, conservation-grade, sash-and-case, energy-efficient, double-glazed windows available that would be acceptable.
Just pure penny-pinching on the part of the owner, who won't pay the premium for timber. People that live in these flats aren't short of money. Zero sympathy.
I'm not suggesting that the owner should be allowed to use PVC but I don't think you can assume that because someone owns a flat in Marchmont that they have a lot of liquid money. They are expensive to buy now but that hasn't always been the case.
Does the council now allow double glazed timber windows in situations like this? There was a time when they insisted that single glazing was replaced like for like.
I wonder where the liability lies regarding the fitters. If the homeowner was genuinely ignorant of the rules should the fitters have told her that they were likely only going to be a temporary feature? It's a bit like an extreme version of selling an electric scooter "for use on private land".
Does the council now allow double glazed timber windows in situations like this?
Yes, listed building consent will normally be given for double glazed conservation-grade timber windows, but you have to apply for it, you can't just change the windows willie-nillie.
In a conservation area, when the building is not listed, you may install double glazed conservation-grade timber windows without needing any planning permission or listed building consent.
Flats in Marchmont have always been expensive, at least since the 1990s, about double what you might pay for a 2-bed house in Currie.
Fitters will do whatever they are instructed to do. Why would they care about a listing?
We've an EST Home Energy loan on secondary glazing from Perth company Glaze and Save. Very discrete and cost effective with no need to remove sash and case windows.
They organised a presentation for residents to show how to protect their listed status, so really worth going that route. If you want / can afford heavyweight Ventrolla Windows they would lend on these as well. Very happy with the alternative.
"Somebody told me to" isn't usually an excuse for breaking the law. Though in this situation it may only be the homeowner who has done so.
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As we look toward the major challenges of the future: the increases of online mis- and dis-information, the rise of automation, the effects of climate change; we have seen the potential damages to health, and the inequity of health, that lack of planning could bring. Our current crises, including cost-of-living, are already showing signs of adversely affecting health. Through cooperation, pooling our resources, and working together across the United Kingdom, we can address these challenges and ensure everyone benefits. We have shown in this paper for the need to work locally.
Equipping local people with decision making powers, financial tools, and data insight can lead toward long-term solutions. It is by grasping the breadth of the wider determinants of health, mindful of their complexities, and having the emotional literacy to understand their impact on our fellow citizens, that can allow for the introduction of policies which improve our collective health and well-being.
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https://ourscottishfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CLOSING-THE-GAP.pdf
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The head of the United Nations has accused the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies of refusing to abandon a business model at odds with human survival despite knowingly putting the world on course for a climate meltdown decades ago.
Speaking at the Davos summit of business and political leaders, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, launched a strong attack on the world’s leading oil companies, many of which are represented at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at the Swiss resort.
Guterres said recent revelations that ExxonMobil knew back in the 1970s that its core product was “baking our planet”, made “big oil” similar to the tobacco companies that knew smoking led to cancer.
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“Ninety-six per cent of people in the UK eat bread, and 90% of that is white bread, which in most cases contains soya. We’ve already performed some experiments and found that fava bean flour can directly replace imported soya flour and some of the wheat flour, which is low in nutrients.
We can not only grow the fava beans here, but also produce and test the fava bean-rich bread, with improved nutritional quality.” The project is backed by £2m of government funding and brings together the researchers, farmers and policymakers to encourage British consumers to eat more broad beans, which mostly go towards animal feed at present.
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Urgent emissions cuts are needed to avoid irreversible climate breakdown and the experts say the super-tipping points are the fastest way to drive global action, offering “plausible hope” that a rapid transition to a green economy can happen in time.
The tipping points occur when a zero-carbon solution becomes more competitive than the existing high-carbon option. More sales lead to cheaper products, creating feedback loops that drive exponential growth and a rapid takeover. The report, launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the three super-tipping points would cut emissions in sectors covering 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
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Don't think we're going to prevent disastrous climate breakdown with "soaring sales of electric cars" and business as usual. Every EV has 27 tonnes of CO2 emissions built in, when manufactured
I hate to say it, but that is not zero. We need to be at zero.
"Green growth" just another example of greenwashing. What we need is "green contraction" into a circular economy with "public luxury" and "private sufficiency"
I fail to understand how not cutting down a rainforest can count as reducing carbon emissions. Surely for something to have a cancelling effect it needs to do the opposite. Ie if you emit carbon then you actually need to absorb carbon to cancel it out rather than not emitting more.
Will the media accept claims by companies that they are carbon neutral because their private jet usage is offset by another jet which is parked up on the tarmac all year and therefore emitting less than it would if it was flying?
I wonder what the bank would say if I suggested cancelling my mortgage debt out because I've persuaded someone on the other side of Edinburgh to spend less money in 2023.
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Unfortunately, planet-heating emissions are woven into almost every action of our lives, meaning that we will each need in some way to confront this emergency. While climate change will be solved at a societal rather than individual level – you can’t recycle your way out of this, sorry – this shouldn’t negate the reality that some habits may have to change, which some will find meddlesome or even oppressive.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/19/gas-stove-culture-war-united-states
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Private planes are up to 14 times more polluting, per passenger, than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains, according to a report by Transport & Environment, a European clean transport campaign organisation. “It goes against the fact that the government has committed to net zero by 2050,” says Alice Ridley, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Better Transport. “They have said they want to see more journeys by public transport, walking and cycling. Taking a private jet is extremely damaging for the environment, especially when there are other alternatives that would be far less polluting and would also be cheaper.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/26/flying-shame-the-scandalous-rise-of-private-jets
@neddie
People that live in these flats aren't short of money. Zero sympathy.
Always easier to have no sympathy when you can operate on pure assumption. I live in a flat like that, I can't even afford a new boiler nevermind the tens of thousands my mum was quoted before she died when enquiring about double glazing from the "historical sash and case window specialists" bandits that the council keeps in business. One of my neighbours is disabled on ESA. Another is retired on the state pension. Plenty of occupants of these properties are student renters who's landlords are never going to fork over for "proper" sash and case energy efficiency retrofits.
The listing/conservation system as it exists and the sad snobbery that underpins it are incompatible with achieving net zero. If a normal person walking by on the street can't notice the difference without paying special attention, the idea you're "diminishing the special character" of a structure in the minds of anyone but Cockburn Society busybodies would be a joke, if it were remotely funny. Forcing people to keep/restore Age of Sail-era window technology would be dumb in any context, but we live in the city of the Turd Hotel ffs.
@Yodhrin
Glaze and Save meet requirements for interest free loan according to EST/HE Scotland. Ok for listed as they ran event to get uptake to improve heat leakage on older sash and case windows in city centre.
Larger windows may be a problem but they have decent team to assess options. (Not getting payback btw!)
@LaidBack Loans don't solve anything for a lot of people either. Even over a longer period, how is someone on benefits/pension/low income supposed to afford tens of thousands of pounds? If we're not going to allow people to use the cheapest, most efficient option available because it offends the sensibilities of architectural preservationists(who I'll bet you a fiver wouldn't be able to pick out one from another reliably from street level unless you pointed it out to them first), then it should be full grants with generous means testing criteria.
Realistically if we want to keep making use of the tenement housing stock in Scotland we should be abandoning this prissy nonsense altogether and running a nationwide, government funded programme to do Enerfit retrofits on whole blocks in one go with external cladding for insulation and airtightness(it's not like a rendered finish is unheard of in the "historic" bits of town), high performance triple-glazing, MVHR systems per-flat, and district heating - fix it properly, knock it down and build modern flats, or just admit that people are actually superficial enough that they value a nice posh looking building over preventing climate breakdown.
There is so much people don't understand about historic buildings...
And yes, uPVC windows are ugly and easily spotted in tenements and other stone-built buildings. We don't go around vandalising buildings, built to last 100s (if not 1000s) of years just for the sake of the cost of some timber. Vandalising and devaluing them makes it more likely they will fall into neglect and be demolished only to be replaced by steel & glass only designed to last 60 years. There is a huge carbon cost in demolishing and rebuilding - the most climate friendly thing we can do is to preserve buildings we have.
Also, you can't simply put external cladding over a stone-built (or stone clad) building because it will lock in moisture and literally destroy the fabric of the building from the inside out.
“Even over a longer period, how is someone on benefits/pension/low income supposed to afford tens of thousands of pounds?”
This is about Edinburgh in the 70s and 80s -
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Back then there were 25 ‘Housing Action Areas’, designated to combat decaying building and living conditions. Five action areas were at the fringes of the New Town including St Stephen Street, where a three-bedroom flat could now set you back over £500,000.
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The aim was to ‘modernise slums’ - adding bathrooms etc and do structural repairs to reduce the chance of demolition.
At the time, Robin Cook, newly an MP, wasn’t sure about it. He had previously been Chair of Housing. He even believed that streets such as Home Street might still have to come down in about 10 years (from then).
That article doesn’t mention the reason it was possible to upgrade/conserve a significant amount of housing - roughly from Gorgie to Easter Road - was because owners were entitled to 75% or 90% grants.
Little chance of that happening again unless Govs get serious about energy and insulation.
Even the silicone sealant used to "seal" uPVC windows to stonework isn't appropriate for the job - the moist and soft stonework quickly pushes off the sealant, allowing water ingress and subsequent damage.
The correct seal to use is sand-mastic, and this is typically used with timber windows (and can't be used with uPVC). Also, sand-mastic must not be painted over - another common mistake
Be aware
Be VERY aware
‘Edinburgh next’
https://mobile.twitter.com/not_ourfuture/status/1618508155981541378
There has to be some substantial irony about complaining about centralised power while using twitter to promote your message.
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