Freezing Assets – Is the New Ice Age Hurting the British Building Industry?

Freezing Assets Is the New Ice Age Hurting the British Building Industry

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This is the third year in a row that bewildered Brits have seen temperatures plummet to well below freezing. With a second cold snap looking set to wrap its icy claws around the heart of the country just in time for Christmas, there's a new question on the lips of everyone involved in the building trade. Will these new freezing winters damage the construction industry?

Unfortunately for the industry, the short answer to that question appears to be "yes". Local regulations alone can prevent concrete and foundation laying if the temperature drops below -2 degrees Centigrade. That's clearly not good if temperatures are going to rattle down to -10 or even -20 and stay there. Extreme cold plays havoc with all sorts of building materials and becomes particularly dangerous when service pipes are not completely laid, or are left exposed. Burst water mains and brittle brickwork don't do much to make the construction company's job any easier as the winter settles hard. Pessimistic estimates bandied around by builders at the start of 2010 (as the UK sank into its second consecutive "Big Freeze") suggested that the damage done to the trade by the weather in December 2009 and January 2010 would represent an unrecoverable loss. Even if the rest of 2010 were to be an extremely good year, received wisdom had it that the losses incurred by halted, damaged and delayed work in December 2009 and January 2010 would blight profit reports for the next 12 months.

We're still in those 12 months: and the weather has brought Britain to a halt for one week already. As Northern infrastructure froze solid, and not even the gritting trucks were able to get out to the roads they were supposed to be clearing, what hope was there for heavy vehicles carrying builder's materials? And how is a building company supposed to do any work even if it can get to its site, when everything is frozen solid or buried under three feet of snow?

In part, of course, the state of the British transport infrastructure when these regular freezes hit sounds a death knell for all trades. You can't build houses if you don't have any bricks: and you won't get any bricks if your lorry driver is stuck somewhere in a 15 hour gridlock.

So is there hope at all for the building trade, in the face of swingeing public spending cuts, a crippled housing market and a weather change that has all the makings of a new Ice Age? Well, yes. It's going to require a bit of a shift in perspective, but there are two factors working in the construction industry's favour here. First, the British home owner is absolutely going to have to find ways of making his or her home warmer and more energy efficient. And second, the lack of actual movement into new homes means that the building trade can make its money during winter months by improving the homes people already live in.

In a strange way, circumstances actually seem to be arranging themselves to benefit the building trade through the cold months that look like becoming the norm for British winters. UK residents are currently not moving house at all, preferring to modify their existing properties so that they become energy efficient and more spacious. Even a major remodelling project costs less by orders of magnitude than trying to move house during the aftermath of the worst recession we've seen in a lifetime.

Within obvious limits, remodelling can be done year round because the work takes place indoors. Most British construction is adversely affected by inclement weather unlike American and European building, which is done by moving pre-made sections of building quickly into place outside, UK building is usually done in situ. In situ in minus temperatures is clearly impossible. Inside, though, is just fine: so all remodelling and internal energy renovations can be done through the early winter months with no problem at all: right on time for the sheets of ice and snow that look so good (and feel so bad when your double glazing isn't up to the job, or your heating systems aren't efficient enough).

Installing energy efficient heating solutions is one way that the building trade can definitely make its losses back. These new cold winters strike fear into the heart of every UK home owner, as energy companies haul their prices up to insupportable levels while the mercury in the thermometer goes down, down, down. The only way a home owner can beat the new energy prices is by having a full on energy makeover and that isn't just possible in the cold weather, it's made necessary because of the cold weather. If it wasn't so unbelievably cold we wouldn't need to have our heating systems modernised just to keep our houses warm: and if the heating companies weren't putting their prices up so high it wouldn't be so imperative that we find a less costly way of providing heat. The combination of extraordinary cold plus high energy prices pretty much demands that British home owners get the builders in to deliver a full, sensible heating solution.

A heat and energy solution that works in weather this cold, and that keeps bill prices down, can involve a fairly extensive interior remodelling. You're going to need a better actual heating system (have you seen the recent press surrounding heated skirting boards?) and you're also going to need to tighten all the areas of your house where heat can get out, or cold can get in. That could mean new windows, new doors and a whole new Gas SAFE plumbing job.

With winters closing in on what looks like an annual basis, the British building trade, like the rest of the nation, is having to come up with ways to cope with weather that the rest of Europe and, indeed, most of the rest of the Western world has been dealing with for centuries. This is what winter is like: we've just never really believed it until now. The UK building trade, which has been forced to face up to the harsh realities of real winter over the last couple of years, can and must change to meet its new challenge. In addition to concentrating on energy efficient heat and insulation installations when it really is too harsh to work outside, the industry would do well to think about changing the way it approaches extension and new building work across the board. If you can't build in the British way when the world is frozen solid don't. Take a leaf out of the American, and the European, books of building. Maybe prefabricated sections with minimal outside time is the way to go for future UK builds. In the meantime, there are plenty of people who need a better heating system and windows that can cut down their energy bills.

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