He is editor of the SPAB Briefings, a series which offers a summary of recent work by the Society with cutting-edge information to help both owners and building professionals. Titles include Energy Efficiency in Old Buildings, Windows & Doors, Lime and Disaster & Recovery.

Roger Tweets @huntwriter and blogs at huntwriter.com. He also lectures regularly on retrofitting and repairing old buildings. Now in its second edition, Old House Eco Handbook, A Practical Guide To Retrofitting For Energy-Efficiency and Sustainability by Roger Hunt and Marianne Suhr, with a foreword by Kevin McCloud, is published by White Lion Publishing in association with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. It is a companion to the authors’ bestselling Old House Handbook. “Three green cheers for this book, which mixes an erudite analysis of the latest building science with practical advice and demonstrations of best practice.” Kevin McCloud, author, broadcaster and designer This practical and essential guide to retrofitting for energy efficiency seeks to provide answers to this and other the questions homeowners of old houses are asking. Whether your house is medieval and timber-framed or a Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian terrace, it can be made more energy efficient and sustainable, and this practical and comprehensive handbook will show you how.Join the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) to learn how to make your home - whether it is medieval and timber-framed, Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian, detached or terrace - energy efficient and low carbon without devaluing the future sustainability or character of the building. PDF / EPUB File Name: Old_House_Eco_Handbook_-_Roger_Hunt.pdf, Old_House_Eco_Handbook_-_Roger_Hunt.epub With any retrofit, building regulations must be considered. In the case of listed buildings, listed building consent might be necessary. Building are generally listed in their entirety which means that interventions internally as well as externally may need approval. Indeed, with all old buildings, careful thought should be given to any retrofit solution that has an impact on character or fabric. Marianne Suhr is a Chartered Building Surveyor specialising in the repair of historic buildings. After a scholarship with the SPAB, she worked for seven years in architectural practice, then full-time on hands-on repair projects including three very different old houses. For the SPAB she has run over 40 homeowners’ courses and numerous ‘limedays’. She is co-author (with Roger Hunt) of Old House Handbook, and has written and lectured extensively. A co-presenter of three series of BBC2’s Restoration, she recently set up the Old House Consultancy, advising on repairs and alterations in the Oxfordshire locality.

How should we go about making old houses energy efficient without devaluing future sustainability or the appeal and character of old homes by the use of inappropriate solutions? Retrofitting should be an holistic process and, for this to happen, it’s essential to know the eventual goal and have a plan or ‘roadmap’. This will enable the most appropriate measures to be selected and their interrelationship with one another to be better understood, even if they’re introduced over an extended period of time as funds and opportunities present themselves. If planning is inadequate, conflicts may occur and work might have to be undone to accommodate future phases of work or to rectify problems. Getting the retrofit techniques wrong in a breathable type of construction can store up problems for the future in terms of damp and condensation. Author Roger Hunt explains why period properties need treating differently when it comes to achieving successful retrofit projects. Interview with Roger Hunt Roger recalls attending a conference not long after Old House Handbook was published where, to meet targets, it was claimed that a city the size of Coventry would need to be retrofit every week.In association with The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, this is a must have for owners of old houses looking to make their homes more energy efficient and sustainable. The Old House Eco Course was excellent - thanks to all who contributed. It was very interesting" - Builder Unintended consequences is a phrase that increasingly crops up when considering energy efficient retrofits to old buildings. This is partly because there is much that is still not understood about what happens when retrofit measures are introduced into older structures. More worryingly, unintended consequences often result from the fact that retrofits are not always well thought through in terms of selecting appropriate solutions and considering how they might interact with one another. Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Full Book Name: Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability

Roger Hunt, co-author (with Marianne Suhr) of Old House Handbook, is an award-winning writer and blogger with a particular interest in sustainable and vernacular architecture and the materials and techniques used in construction. He is the author of Rural Britain: Then and Now, a celebration of the British countryside, Villages of England and Hidden Depths, an archaeological exploration of Surrey’s past. Roger Hunt studied stage management at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and then worked in film, television and photography. Loving history, and having been intrigued by building techniques and materials since childhood, he started writing about buildings. He is now an award winning writer and blogger specialising in sustainability, old houses, housebuilding and traditional and modern building materials and construction.His work has appeared in numerous publications including The Daily Telegraph, Period Living, House & Garden, Grand Designs, Homebuilding & Renovating, Real Homes and Listed Heritage. He is sustainability correspondent for Show House, a title aimed at the housebuilding industry, and is a judge of the What House? Awards for new housing. In association with The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, this is a must have for owners of old houses looking to make their homes more energy efficient and sustainable. Old House Eco Handbook A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability, reviewed Roger says that some sort of mechanical ventilation is almost inevitable, particularly for kitchens and bathrooms, but heat recovery systems don't necessarily work well in old buildings. Reducing drafts is as important to comfort level as insulation A risk of coming in and doing a complete retrofit of an old building is that it can lose some of the character which makes us love them in the first place.