Dimensiones de: Infracciones Tributarias

6.3.1. Following rules

At all three cases residents discussed verbal and written instructions about ventilating their homes. For example, at Case B, Betty recalls being told ‘don’t touch anything’ when she moved in, as does Paul. Betty also mentions how she is ‘not allowed’ to leave windows open at night after being instructed to ‘lock up at night because it’s not safe’. Both these residents have accepted the rules and appear to be abiding by them; for example, Paul says ‘I’m a good boy. I do what I’m told.’ This contrasts with Anthony, who questions whether it is really necessary to keep the MVHR switched on, as him and his wife keep the windows open at night. He is concerned about the running cost of the system:

‘If we have the windows open do we need this on? Because it says in the booklet keep it on all the time but it-- I don’t know what the running costs of it are.’

At Case A, Fara recalled being told to leave filter changing to the experts because ‘they have to do it themselves because they have a specific filter from the company [….] you can’t buy that filter in the shops.’ Here, by following ‘rules’, residents are excluded from parts of the ventilation practice (e.g. maintenance), particularly those parts relating to unfamiliar or new equipment. Furthermore, elements of a ventilation practice are performed by different bodies whilst still relating to the same physical arrangement (a particular home).

This challenges the idea that humans are carriers of a particular practice as, here, separate humans perform different parts of the practice.

Ventilation rules seem to be more about ‘not doing’ than ‘doing’. For examples, at Case C, Maria remembers being instructed to leave trickle vents open all the time and not to obstruct the ceiling vents:

‘When we first moved, the lady who came to show us the house, yeah, she said “that’s ventilations, shouldn’t be closed any time. Keep it open it’s just to have the air come inside and ventilation”’.

Whilst Maria did not questions this rule, Sarah does not seem to have heeded the advice, as she described opening up trickle vents after winter, even though she recalls reading the

‘welcome pack’ (6.2.2, 7.2.1). Both residents previously lived in very damp and mouldy homes which they blamed for causing their children to suffer from ill health, so it is surprising that only Maria obeys the rule. This suggests that there may be a difference between receiving instructions in person and reading a manual.¹⁴⁸ Not every resident is

148 Instruction manuals and handover are discussed further in Chapter 7.

willing to follow instructions. For instance, Ali blames the rules for constraining his family’s actions and reducing their comfort. He is dissatisfied with the strength of extraction from the kitchen, which he blames on to ‘the sealed nature of the house’ which, he says, prevented them from making ‘holes in the structure and fabric of it so we couldn’t have an external vent here’.

‘It’s a very small ventilation and it’s not very good. And it’s not really fit for removing a lot of the smells in the kitchen. Whether it’s Asian cooking or any other kind of cooking onions are onions.’

His comment hints at a cultural sensitivity around accommodating different people’s cooking practices. It sounds as though his concerns about the ventilation technology may have been dismissed as due to ‘Asian cooking’. Instead, the members of this household open windows when cooking.

At Case B, Paul wrote to the RSL to ask for a cooker hood after visitors to his flat mentioned that they could smell the sausages which he had cooked earlier that day. The RSL informed him that he wasn’t allowed a cooker hood until he’d lived there for two years and advised him to use the booster switch instead. However he prefers to use the windows because ‘all the cooking smells have got to get out somewhere’. This comment doesn’t acknowledge the MVHR extract vents which are already present in his flat for this purpose. This resident’s use of windows is shaped by both institutional and material constraints.

Some rules apply to one household member but not another. For example, Sarah explains how she feels unable to place the same restrictions on her older, middle-aged, brother, who is currently living with them, as she does on her teenage son, who is only permitted to smoke outside the house. Consequently, her brother’s bedroom window is left open all year round, potentially contributing to unnecessary heat loss.

‘We’re both in our fifties and he’s older than me and it’s like telling a child

“you can’t smoke in your room.” [….] In the winter time, yeah, he hibernates upstairs. But he’s always got that window open.’

6.3.2. Healthy living

Several residents use ventilation to alleviate chronic health conditions. For example, Ali explains that his physical health condition caused ‘some psychological secondary symptoms’ which were

‘really helped [….] by the house’. He attributes his improvement to the ‘openness of the place’,

‘that sense of Swedishness’ and ‘the fact that we had a garden [….] you can see the trees outside’. Sarah states that if she wakes up ‘and it’s a bit grey’ she opens the front and back doors ‘so the air comes through’ until ‘it’s lifted’. Compared to her previous home where she felt

‘very tired […] now I can think broad and wide; I can smile; I can get lost in one of the rooms’.

On the other hand, Carla is dissatisfied with her ventilation arrangement, which she believes is distributing ‘dust’ around her house. She is struggling to cope, and blames the ventilation for exacerbating her family’s asthma and making them sneeze as ‘they are allergic to stuff like that because they suffer from hay fever’. This resident is physically and mentally worn out by trying to run her house as she would like to and has even resorted to repainting the internal walls using different paint to see if ‘if that will reduce things’:¹⁴⁹

‘I can’t really rest; I have to get on and do it. [….] So which is not good for my health either. Instead of me sitting down relaxing all I want to do is tidy up, clean.’

In some dwellings, windows are opened at night to alleviate health concerns and simultaneously aid sleep. For example, Paul suffers from a sweating condition and ‘can’t sleep’ unless he has

‘a flow of air through’ his bedroom. When forced to close the window, because ‘it was very stormy’ and wind was ‘blowing the thing [curtain] all over the place’, he endured an interrupted night’s sleep. Pamela suffers from asthma and notes how ‘at night times I suddenly wake up and got an attack coming, especially if my window is shut. Then I’ll open it a little bit’. Although she is disappointed that the new house has not helped her own asthma, she acknowledges that her ‘children’s asthmas have cleared up’, with the added benefit that they do not get as many colds as they did in their old house, where one child’s illness ‘would go through the whole of winter’. Two other residents discussed how their children’s allergic symptoms had improved since living in their home (Fara and Maria). These residents explain that their children’s asthma was originally caused by exposure to damp and mould in their previous homes. Maria was advised by a health inspector that the ‘mould on the ceiling’ at her previous house could ‘lead to the problem’ and was relieved that her two children are now ‘healthy’.

The architect at Case A recalls meeting a resident at a different scheme who had ‘turned [the MVHR] off because they were saying that it was going to give their-- it was going to give their kids asthma’. A similar concern was raised by Anthony, who has developed a chronic cough since moving into a dwelling with MVHR.¹⁵⁰ With advice from two GPs he has ‘got down to one common denominator: that’s this ventilation system’. The myth surrounding the benefits of outdoor air appears to have endured since Victorian times (see 2.2.2). Fara explains that opening windows at night is ‘a good thing’, even during winter. Despite being advised otherwise, regular window opening remains part of this family’s ventilation regime:

149 Initially, ‘breathable’ paint was used internally at Case C (5.1.3). It is unclear whether the resident’s own paint was also breathable.

150 Six months at this flat and six months in his previous flat, which was part of the same development and located nearby.

‘We have been told by the people that came round from [RSL] that in the night none of the windows don’t have to be open [….] but we still keep the other windows open during the night.’

Cultural myths surrounding health have prompted some residents to abandon daily routines while unwell. Two residents explained that they were suffering from colds, and that this was why certain windows were closed. While Anthony kept the windows closed because he was ‘just getting over a cold’, Dan was actively trying to ‘sweat it out’ by making the flat warmer than usual. Karen mentions that she prefers to close the bedroom window at night because she has a problem with her back and has ‘to be careful about the draughts coming in, obviously.’ Finally, Ali augmented his family’s ventilation routine by purchasing a freestanding cooling unit when one of his children was ill. He insisted that ‘we don’t actually use it as such’; however, as the artefact is now part of the dwelling, it could become integrated into another practice in due course. It appears that occupants’ acute or chronic health status might affect their ventilation practices and may even lead to practices which are energy-inefficient, such as opening windows in winter and using electric fans during summer.

6.3.3. Lack of technical knowledge

There is a mixed level of awareness and understanding of ventilation systems and technologies in the dwellings. Residents are trying to make sense of the systems as best they can, looking for visual or aural clues to detect whether the system is functioning. For example, Ali is reassured that the ventilation is working, because the fans occasionally make some noise.

However, although he is aware of the MEV system, he demonstrates some confusion about the details of how it functions. He explains that air is being fed to the trickle vents via the central fan unit, and then pushed around the house; thus he confuses the direction of the airflow and misinterprets the purpose of the wall vents. He also describes the thermostat as ‘a Doctor Who contraption’ and ‘some kind of Pandora’s box thing’ revealing his struggle to relate to this technology.

Betty is not very familiar with modern technology, referring to technological devices as ‘fidlies’

her thermostat as the ‘old whotsit’, ceiling vents as ‘thingys’ and sensors as ‘eco-gadgets’.

Nonetheless, she seems to be coping well with the new MVHR system and is comfortable and content in her home. On the other hand, Anthony shows some mistrust of the unfamiliar technology, arguing that ‘I don’t think there’s any substitute for fresh air [….] it’s natural isn’t it?’

He also questions the need for MVHR in his home and indicates that he would prefer to live in a naturally ventilated space. He appears confused about what the MVHR actually does, suggesting that the air is not ‘natural;’ this resonates with the myth that natural is ‘good’ and unnatural is ‘bad’:

‘Imagine that you’re in my position and got, you may have one of these systems, which would you prefer on a summer’s day? The windows and doors open or a ventilation system?’

smoke everywhere in the kitchen’. After following instructions from her mother to press the button, the smoke soon cleared. She now knows to use the booster whenever cooking.

Pamela’s kitchen boost button is locked in a depressed position and the fan only sucks for

‘about thirty seconds’ before stopping (Figure 117).¹⁵¹ However, she isn’t aware that there is a technical issue as she ‘was led to believe [….] that’s what it’s meant to do’; instead, she thinks its erratic functioning is just ‘one of the foibles’ of the house.

‘You don’t switch it on and it stays on-- you have to keep pressing-- so literally you press it one and it goes “dzdzdzd” like that and sucks it all away’.

Her workaround to this problem is to press the booster immediately after cooking to ‘suck’ out smells, rather than switching it on before or during cooking as others do. This has led to some frustration as ‘when you’re doing a big meal or you’re cooking, frying constantly, it’s not strong enough […] it’s crap.’ At these times, ‘If you don’t have the windows open the whole house fills with smoke and it all drifts up into the hall’. She has learned to prevent the smoke alarm going off by opening the rooflight before starting to cook. Pamela is also disappointed that the extractor fan is not strong enough ‘for the size of the house’ to remove pet smells. She blames the ‘manufacturers’ and uses the windows instead:

‘Cat litter is actually in the hall. [….] I’ve got the window open and it’s circulating. If I didn’t have the windows open I’m pretty damn sure you would smell it and it would be pretty stinky because they do get quite smelly, especially smudge, bless him.’

This is an example of a resident trying to use the system for something it isn’t really designed for. Furthermore, because she is unaware that there is a fault, she hasn’t sought help, and is dissatisfied with the system. Another example of a resident misusing a technology is Carla, who struggles to stay warm during winter and has found a novel solution of using her television, in combination with closing the living room door, to warm up the space:

‘If that TV is on, it has to be, it helps to warm it up and we keep that [door]

closed as well.’

Carla demonstrates her lack of technical knowledge by suggesting that the (PSV) ventilation hasn’t been switched on by the designers: ‘My hunch is that maybe there is something that they didn’t switch on’. She struggles to make sense of the PSV technology and is not able to explain how it is supposed to work, lamenting that ‘these are the vents I was talking about; what they were doing, what work it does I have no clue’. However, knowledge itself doesn’t automatically translate to practice. Anthony is aware that he will need to change the filters in his MVHR unit, but is reluctant to do so until it’s really necessary:

151 Instead of continuing for 15-20 minutes as one would expect it to do.

‘I think you have to change a filter every now and again but I shall probably wait until it breaks down before I do anything.’

Institutionalised knowledge is just one element of a practice. In this case, despite having some understanding of how the system should be used, the resident’s passive engagement with the technology suggests that the required maintenance may not get done.¹⁵² Some technical knowledge about the new ventilation systems seems to be accumulated by residents as they adapt to living in their new home (e.g. from inductions, manuals, and other contacts).¹⁵³ On the other hand, it appears that use of windows may be part of older, more embodied knowledge relating to myths and past experiences.

6.4. Engagements: Providing a thermally comfortable, secure and