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"Roaf, Susan"
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Rethinking User Behaviour Comfort Patterns in the South of Spain—What Users Really Do
Although energy analysis techniques can contribute to substantial energy savings in housing stock retrofitting operations, the outcomes often deviate significantly from the predicted results, which tend to overestimate potential savings by overestimating the starting energy baselines, particularly in southern Europe. This deviation can be largely attributed to occupant practice relating to the use of air conditioning facilities and the temperatures at which occupants feel comfortable. The patterns observed differed widely from standard values. In this study environmental variables, primarily indoor air temperature both with and without HVAC, were monitored in occupied dwellings for a full year. The data gathered were supplemented with surveys on occupants’ temperature-related behaviour to define comfort patterns. The findings show that the standards in place are not consistent with actual comfort-accepted patterns in medium- to low-income housing in southern Spain, where energy consumption was observed to be lower than expected, mostly because occupants endure unsuitable, even unhealthy, conditions over long periods of time. A new user profile, better adjusted to practice in southern Europe, particularly in social housing, is proposed to reflect the current situation.
Journal Article
Running buildings on natural energy : design thinking for a different future
\"New thinking is essential if we are to design and occupy buildings that can keep us safe with unpredictable economies, climates, energy systems and resource challenges. For too long designers have relied on mechanical solutions for heating, cooling and ventilating buildings. The 21st century dream has to be of a better architecture that enables buildings to be run for as much of a day or year as possible on local, clean, reliable, affordable natural energy. Examples are included from different climates where the fundamental building design is right, its orientation, opening sizes, mass and its natural ventilation systems and pathways. Many modern buildings are poorly designed for climate as manifested by growing incidences of overheating experienced indoor, explored here. The inability of many rating systems to record and improve the climatic design of buildings raises questions about how they deal with issues of basic building performance. This books points the way towards how we can understand such problems, and move forward from over-mechanised poorly designed buildings to a new generation of adaptable buildings designed and refurbished to run largely on natural energy and capable of evolving over time to keep their occupants safe and comfortable, even in a warming world. The chapters were originally published in Architectural Science Review.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Assessing Pro-environmental Behaviour in Relation to the Management of Pollution from Private Sewage Systems
Recent studies suggest that 80 % of the estimated 1.5 million private sewage systems (PSS) in the UK are working inefficiently, potentially threatening drinking water quality and human health, as well as providing a significant source of phosphorus (P) to freshwater bodies, increasing vulnerability to eutrophication. In this report we explore pro-environmental behaviours of PSS users that potentially offer significant reduction in both PSS system failure and P discharge by 1) reducing P input to the PSS by modifying domestic behaviour, and 2) reducing the risk of PSS failure by improving maintenance of the PSS. A detailed questionnaire of 156 PSS users in the catchment of Loch Leven, Scotland, UK, revealed 70 % of users feel responsible for maintaining their PSS, 46 % are potentially maintaining them ineffectively, nearly 30 % have poorly installed systems and 45 % report their PSS had, at some point, blocked or overflowed. Our results indicate that the most effective action to improve PSS operation would be to provide better guidance on low P lifestyles and correct PSS maintenance with an improvement in the provision of facilities to support these pro-environmental behaviours.
Journal Article
The Sustainability of High Density
Cities have come and gone across the world for nearly 10,000 years since people first began to live in villages. The first known settlement of actual buildings was at Gange Dareh (Roaf et al, 2009), dating to around 7000BC, high in the Zagros Mountains looking across the plains of Mesopotamia (Iraq) to where Ur, Babylon and Nineveh grew in the Cradle of Civilization - huge dense cities, of which 'Nothing beside remains' (Shelley, Ozymandeus) and all had disappeared by the time that Mohammad, Buddha or Christ were born. If you have ever explored the Kasbah of Algiers, the twisting wynds of 18th-century Edinburgh, the alleys of Jerusalem or any other of the great medieval cities, you will know that density in cities is sustainable until, of course, that city falls.
Book Chapter
Spirit and place
Built environment surrounds us for 90% of our lives but only now are we realising its influence on the environment, our health, and how we think, feel and behave both individually and socially.Spirit & Place shows how to work towards a sustainable environment through socially inclusive processes of placemaking, and how to create places that are nourishing psychologically and physically, to soul and spirit as well as body. This book's unique arguments identify important, but often unrecognised, principles and illustrate their applicability in a wide range of situations, price-ranges and climates. It shows how to reconcile the apparently incompatible demands of environmental, economic and social sustainability; how to moderate climate to make places of delight, and realign social pressures so places both support society and maximise economic viability. Thought provoking and easy to understand, Christopher Day uses everyday examples to relate his theories to practice and our experience.
eBook
Reply: Letter: Carbon targets, renewables and atomic risks
* As we approach another drought, (Report, 12 March), consider August 1666, when the Thames at Oxford was reduced to a trickle. . . In 2007 a nuclear power station site was still proposed at Didcot on the Thames; even when in \"down mode\" a nuclear power station requires around 3MW of cooling to keep the fuel rods stable.
Newspaper Article