Across Europe, more than 20% of those on low incomes struggle to keep their homes adequately warm and the most recent figures for England indicate that 13% of those in social housing are living in fuel poverty, with low incomes and high energy costs placing them below the poverty line. It’s a situation that many […]
Anyone who watched Channel 4’s Dispatches series on the conditions that some social housing tenants are living in was probably just as horrified as I was about the mould and harmful spores on the interior walls of their homes. This certainly doesn’t reflect NBT’s experience of the social housing sector, where some excellent work is […]
From the beginning of June 2019, Natural Building Technologies will trade under the SOPREMA name. Natural Building Technologies has been part of the SOPREMA Group for over 3 years; they provide solutions for the building envelope in over 90 countries. In the UK, the Group own three separate companies; NBT, Texsa, and Soprema UK, which […]
When you’re passionate about the built environment and how we could make it so much better, it can sometimes be easy to think you’re in a minority of one, pushing water uphill and trying to square and eternal circle. Today (28 Feb 2019), however, stakeholders from across the construction delivery chain will gather at the […]
The crackle of wood in the hearth or on a campfire is one of those sounds that everyone loves, along with the scent of wood smoke and the warmth from the flames. But it would be a mistake to think that timber burns easily as part of a building’s structure; quite the opposite in fact. […]
With almost the whole of 2019 to look forward to, we look briefly back on 2018 and remember what’s been achieved, how far we’ve come, what we’ve learned and how we can use this moving forward; not just as a company but as a whole sector. 2018 was a massive year for NBT with sales […]
As the winter sets in and we all turn up the thermostat, we’re reminded of how inefficient and draughty a traditionally-built home can be. And yet, not much has changed in the way much of our domestic buildings are constructed, perpetuating the problem of poor building comfort and unnecessary carbon emissions. The problem is that […]
While the shops seem eager to foist Christmas upon us ever earlier, it’s been exhibition season for those of us in the construction industry. And if you’re old enough to remember when Christmas started the day school broke up and the only time films were shown on the BBC you’ll also have seen exhibition traditions […]
The UK Passivhaus Conference took place in Leeds last month, bringing together those passionate and curious about a building design approach that achieves very low or zero carbon emissions for the occupied building. Since the Passivhaus Institute was established in Germany in 1996, an estimated 65,000 buildings have been designed, constructed and tested to rigorous […]
Around the UK, people are packing up their garden furniture for another year, making sure their gutters are in good order for the winter and reluctantly switching on their heating to make their homes cosy for the dark evenings to come. In short, we’re getting ready to enjoy the comfort of home in the winter […]
We don’t talk about the environmental impact of CFCs much anymore because the O-Zone depleting gases were banned worldwide back in 2010 in an attempt to stop the damage to the O-Zone getting any worse. However, global efforts to reduce buildings’ operational carbon by improving the thermal performance of the building envelope have inadvertently contributed […]
We’ve had a great summer so far haven’t we? Weeks of uninterrupted sunshine for most of us and balmy evenings watching England almost bringing it home. But it’s not all good news. The soaring temperatures have provided a timely reminder about the continuing impact of global warming and how it will affect the way we […]
