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If you live in a new or new-ish home, badly, I imagine. Last Monday, the experience of walking to the station from my home in London was not unlike the time I stepped off an aeroplane in Doha into a wall of heat so intense that I wondered how anyone could breathe.
Decades ago, such temperatures were not a common feature of British summertime, but now 30°C days are increasingly common in southern England, as temperatures in the high 20s are further north.
It’s time to face facts: Britain is an increasingly hot country. We are not a temperate place with mild winters and summers, but rather, somewhere where intense heatwaves are an increasingly common feature of our climate.
My news editor, Richard, is one of thousands of people impacted by this problem. He lives in a newly built house just outside of London, where he could not get the bedroom “below 32°C last week”.
I, too, living in a one-bedroom flat which was built in 2017, have to sleep with multiple fans on, and my balcony doors open during much of the summer. And, even then, it’s too hot.
If you’re lucky enough to live in a Victorian, Georgian or older home with thick brick or stone walls, you’ll know that a house can be cool on hot days. Even better if it has a garden with established trees to provide shade. No air con needed.
Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, and author of the book Hothouse Earth, said: “One of the scariest things is that the Met Office forecast a weather forecast for 2050 a few years back, and the temperatures we are experiencing [in present day heatwaves] are pretty much the same as that,” he told me in 2022. “By the mid-century, this sort of summer will be no big deal,” he added.
Thick stone or brick walls provide insulation – they keep heat inside during the winter but keep it out during the summer. This is because they take a long time to heat up. Modern UK homes tend to have thinner walls and use woven synthetic insulation, which is effective at doing the former but not the latter, leaving homes incredibly hot in warmer months.
“Modern housing stock operates the other way around,” he explains. “Britain has the poorest insulated housing stock in Europe, which means homes lose heat quicker in winter, and are very poor at keeping the heat out when temperatures outside are high. Many are completely unsuited to the more frequent and intense heatwaves we are seeing due to climate breakdown. Future summer temperatures of 40°C+ will make many properties, especially flats, unliveable in the summer months.”
So, is the mass installation of air conditioning going to be the answer? Last week, as temperatures soared, Instagram videos and angry tweets circulated claiming that air conditioning is “banned” in Britain.
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It is possible to retrospectively install air conditioning in homes in Britain. In some cases, planning permission will be required, but in others it can be done through something known as Permitted Development Rights (PDR) without planning. This will depend on the type of building you live in, for instance, whether you have a garden or space for the unit to sit or whether you’re in a leasehold flat in a large building.
It is also true that building regulations do not properly dictate to what extent new-builds should include proper cooling systems that can cope with high temperatures.
“Moving forward, the Government should change its regulations on overheating to allow air conditioning units to comply with those regulations, which they currently don’t do, except under special circumstances,” he told me.
Heat pump technology is probably the way forward because it can be more efficient and cost-effective than traditional air conditioning, but, as things stand, it is still in the process of becoming mainstream. Another problem is that Government grants for heat pumps to encourage their use are currently only available for cheaper models, and the “reversible” versions, which both heat and cool, are more expensive.
McGuire worries that a lack of forward planning from planners and housebuilders will lead to a misguided focus on air conditioning.
But something other than our sleep has to give.
Is your home too hot? I’d love to talk to you. Please do email me vicky.spratt@theipaper.com
This week, the latest data from major mortgage lender Halifax suggests that house prices are indeed flatlining, if not gently falling.
All told, house prices are still higher than they were a year ago, but this can be explained by the frenzy of buying and selling activity that took place before the stamp duty holiday ended on March 31.
These high house prices are now coming up against the fact that Britain’s job market is softening.
The only reliable data is longer-lead transactions data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which lags mortgage lenders’ statistics.
Are you struggling to buy, sell or get a mortgage? I’d love to talk. Please do email vicky.spratt@theipaper.com
Vicky’s pick
“I’m fiscally conservative but socially liberal…”
I think we can all agree that Nina manages to succinctly sum up one of the contradictions of contemporary politics there.
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