Eco Refurb Scotland

This website draws on text and illustrations from an original book 'Sustainable Renovation - Improving homes for energy, health and the environment.' It was written by Chris Morgan of John Gilbert Architects in Glasgow. Both the book and this website were funded through the generosity of The Pebble Trust and the Scottish Ecological Design Association (SEDA).
The architect authors of the content are committed to environmental principles that relate to the reduction of Global Heating, damaging resource depletion and environmental degradation. From this point of view, materials recommended for use in construction will be chosen with environmental attributes high on the list.
There exists a number of design and construction standards in the building industry. Some of the standards, such as Building Regulations, require legal compliance - but other standards, mostly aspirational involve require compliance to high degrees of energy conservation. These are a matter of choice and it is more often the case that refurbishers will choose slightly lesser degrees of performance that we feel are more easily achievable. These different levels of performance are discussed within the appropriate sections of this design guide.
Included too in the route to a degree of retrofit/refurbishment, is the idea of 'comfort' for continuing users of the building. 'Comfort' of course is a term we use very subjectively. Each of us has a different idea of what that might be. But as building designers, it's something that needs considering at early stages of the design so that ideas and expectations can be managed throughout the process.
We also include a section not featured in Chris Morgans original book. GreenSpec who have assembled this website using Chris's information have added a facility that we hope will optimise the use of 'sustainable' materials by providing access to manufacturers and suppliers through using the site. We hope this is useful to you.
Finally, though we have followed Chris Morgans design guidance to the letter, there is much much more discussion that we have committed from this website in order to take advantage of how the internet is used. For an informed context, it should be worth obtaining Chris's book.