SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

摘要

From the outside, 17 St Augustine's Road, in north-west London, looks just like the other mid-Victorian semi-detached homes lining the road. Admittedly, it has a fresher coat of paint than its neighbour, and the garden has recently had a makeover, but there's little to give away the fact that this house comfortably outperforms most modern new builds when it comes to energy use. Its completion is timely. With soaring energy prices and government targets for cutting carbon emissions, improving the efficiency of existing housing stock has become paramount. But attempting it with a home that's a century and a half old is a challenge that few have taken on. Camden council, however, had an incentive as 60% of its properties are in a conservation area and, like more than half of its homes and 5 million others in the UK, they are built using solid wall construction. Chit Chong, the council's energy and sustainability manager, says the aim of the project was to take an existing house and see what could be achieved. "The original aim was to reduce carbon emissions by 90%," he says.