Examples

Energy conservation – buildings

Building regulations and historic buildings, English Heritage 2004

Understanding how the building works: Many historic buildings include soft, weak or permeable materials, e.g. mortars, plasters, renders and paints. These cause the fabric to respond in fundamentally different ways to air, moisture and structural movement from the hard, strong, impervious materials and membranes widely used in modern construction. Before any work is carried out, it is therefore important that a building’s system of construction and the way in which this might have changed over time is understood – and that alterations are compatible with this system.