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Living in a safe and comfortable home is a goal for all residents. The interviews reveal a selection of activities which relate to this goal, many of which involve interactions with ventilation components; here, it appears that ventilation is part of a wider bundle of ‘homemaking’

practices. As well as thermal comfort (2.1.3), residents seek visual, auditory and olfactory comfort, and a feeling of safety and security at home.

6.4.1. Thermal comfort and security

Some activities relating to thermal comfort share the physical components of the ventilation system, indicating a closeness between ventilation and thermal comfort practices. For example, Dan explains that ‘‘it can be a bit warm first thing in the morning, because obviously you get up and you open the window’. Also, Joy describes how on hot nights she ‘would leave the window open’, using night ventilation to cool down the space. Furthermore, openings can also be used in combination with mechanical ventilation, such as portable electric fans, to lower temperatures. Fara discusses her family’s bedtime routine (during warm weather) which involves putting ‘the fan on about twenty minutes and then turn it off’’ and then ‘the windows would be open’ for the rest of the night, providing a ‘nice breeze’. This family also use the bedroom rooflights to stay comfortable at night. In one room in particular they find it a useful alternative to electric fans. The reason is that one of the children who sleeps there has a disability and another is a small baby; therefore, the family feel it is safer not to leave a fan running in that room. The grandfather, who sleeps in his own room downstairs, doesn’t like fans so he doesn’t use one in his room. In this household, comprising 11 members, a combination of different ventilation techniques and multiple technologies are used in an attempt to stay comfortable.

152 Anthony part-owns his home under a shared ownership scheme and so is responsible for maintaining the mechanical systems himself (e.g. MVHR unit and boiler).

153 See Chapter 7 for development of these ideas.

In another more extreme example, the fan is left on all night in an attempt by residents to cool down:

‘It just gets really, really, stuffy, and really hot, unbearable to sleep really.

So, soon as you sleep you sort of start getting sweaty and you can’t really sleep and then the fan’s on constantly.’ [Sabeen]

Staying comfortable is usually prioritised over the cost of heating or environmental concerns, although the cost of running MVHR is questioned by one resident:

‘I’ve no idea what the running cost of this is. If I found out it was ten pounds a week I’d probably switch it off during the summer.’ [Anthony]

Only two interviewees refer to actively avoiding opening doors and windows while the heating is on; For example, Dan explains how he ‘won’t leave the heating choking away with the door open [….] I turn everything off’. Nonetheless, keeping the household and the dwelling’s contents safe is considered important enough to take precedence over thermal comfort. Several residents say that they always close windows when they go out; for example Pamela states that

‘if we’re out [….] windows are always shut; they’re all shut’. On the other hand, Sarah leaves upstairs windows open, but makes sure the downstairs ones are closed, when going out.

Evidently, the level of concern about intruders varies between households. At Case B varying perceptions of safety and fear guide window opening. Perhaps understandably, Dan, who lives in a ground floor flat, is ‘a bit conscious about leaving windows open when I’m not here’ even though he insists that ‘it’s a nice area, don’t get any trouble’. However, out of principle, he’s always kept windows closed when going out:

‘Never have done. Wherever I’ve lived I’ve never left the windows open when I’m not in.’

Despite living in the second floor flat directly above Steve, Luke will not leave the window open when he goes out, whilst Steve does it every day, explaining how ‘even when I goes to work I leaves that window open like that’. Luke believes that ‘it’s stupid’ to leave windows open when going out, adding that ‘even at two storeys someone could get in couldn’t they?’ His is one of the dwellings which is most prone to overheating; it may be that this could be alleviated through more frequent ventilation. For Steve, privacy is more of a concern than safety; he keeps the curtains closed so that people cannot see into his home:

‘I leaves the curtains drawn. I don’t want, seeing my pants, do you know what I mean? I don’t like the idea, I mean, open my curtains, it’s rude. You don’t want people seeing you in bed.’

Finally, Maria uses the curtains to keep out light so that ‘we can sleep a little bit longer without waking up’, this indicates how windows and curtains are caught up in ‘bundles’ of activities relating to different comfort needs.

Individual thermal comfort preferences can be negotiated through ventilation. For example, Pamela’s son likes to leave his bedroom windows ‘open all the time’ because he ‘likes fresh air

running through the house, well, running through his room’. Similarly, Sarah’s nephew leaves his bedroom windows ‘wide, wide, open in summer and winter’ because he ‘like[s] cold’.

Windows enable members of the household to adjust the temperature of their immediate environment without having to interact with the heating technology, to which they may not have access. In cases where two (or more) occupants share a bedroom, night time window-opening practices are negotiated to suit different comfort needs. For example, Karen, who has a bad back, keeps the window on her side of the bed closed as she sleeps with her back to it, while her husband, on the other side, can leave his own window open without causing her discomfort.

This arrangement relies on the physical layout of the spaces as well as social relationships.

Varying use of windows reflects not only the individual thermal comfort requirements, but also points towards stratification of temperatures across some dwellings. Carla explains how temperatures vary across her house, so it can be simultaneously cold downstairs, and too hot upstairs.

‘If it’s the night I will come downstairs and turn it down so anybody sitting downstairs will not be able to stay downstairs; they will have to come upstairs.’

This causes problems at night and leads to arguments with her husband; he works late and feels cold when he comes home, but cannot turn the heating on or his wife wakes up with a dry throat. At the same time her son is upstairs suffering from heat rash:

‘He has to keep the window opened. [….] For him to able to sleep. Yeah because it’s too hot here. [….] Every night he has to do that and he’s not wearing pyjamas to sleep because it’s too hot.’

Her solution for coping with this is to turn off the heating in her room and using a heavier duvet instead; however her son’s discomfort remains. Perhaps as household size grows, it becomes harder and harder to please everyone.

6.4.2. Hygiene: Maintaining a clean and fresh home

Keeping the home fresh and free from smells is also important to residents. At Cases A and B many residents use booster switches when cooking to remove smoke, steam and smells. While some people use their switch every time they cook, others prefer to open windows when carrying out routine food preparation, and only press the booster occasionally, such as when cooking a particularly heavy meal. For example, Paul states that ‘if it’s really heavy cooking or I’m burning something then I tend to switch it on, but otherwise I don’t bother’, while Steve points out that ‘it just depends what you’re cooking; if you’re boiling spuds and that you get a lot of steam off the bag don’t you?’ On the other hand, Sabeen explains that whenever ‘I start cooking I’ll switch it on’. Dan also uses the booster regularly, as there is no window in his kitchen:

‘I use it every time I cook yeah. Just for the sole reason you haven’t got a

Dan adds that ‘I keep that [living room] door shut so you don’t get it going round the whole flat, the smell.’ Here, the spread of smells and other pollutants within the dwellings is explicitly connected to the layout of the space.¹⁵⁴ In some properties, open plan living arrangements are not felt to be compatible with a family’s cooking practices. For example, Sabeen would prefer a separate kitchen and living area as she finds that the smell of cooking ‘embeds in the sofas’.

Another resident who appreciates the separation of kitchen and living room is Carla, for whom

‘closing the door’ and being able to ‘stay in a particular place’ is considered a ‘luxury’. External smells may also cause discomfort and need to be removed. For example, Betty uses the booster to remove the smell of her neighbour’s cooking which she believes is entering her home.

‘When she’s cooking downstairs I get her meal coming through there […] I don’t know what she cooks but it’s a funny smell. Yeah, but I can smell it, so I put my booster on and it goes off out again.’

Betty is the only resident who explicitly states that she doesn’t need to open windows thanks to her ventilation system. As an older person, who lives alone and who doesn’t cook much, the extraction rate seems to be sufficient for her needs. As well as kitchens and cooking, bathrooms and pets were also discussed in relation to removing smells by opening windows. For example, Pamela explains that the bathroom window was temporarily open at the time of the interview,

‘because somebody had done a crap’, and that the downstairs windows are generally ‘open a little crack anyway just because it gets a bit doggy smelly’, thanks to their elderly pet dog. The homes at Case C do not have booster switches or mechanical kitchen extracts. For Joy, opening the kitchen door and the window while cooking is an effective way to dilute pollutants and smells and to bring in fresh air:

‘The kitchen has got a window so like if I’m cooking, I open the door, I open the window, so at least the cooking fumes will go out and the fresh air will come in.’

However, during summer this is insufficient for Maria, who also uses an electric fan while cooking and is considering purchasing a mechanical cooker hood.¹⁵⁵ In the meantime a closed door with an open window seems to be an acceptable workaround.

‘We have a lot of cooking and we have to open the window and close the kitchen door […] because we don’t have the extractor.’

154 See typical floor plans in section 5.1, which show the open plan kitchen/living room arrangement at Case B (Figure 36), and the separation between kitchen and living areas at Case C (Figure 39). At Case A, the layout varies across the site with some open plan units and some with separate kitchens.

155 The impact of a cooker hood on the PSV system is unclear but there may be a risk that air is pulled down the kitchen stack instead of up and out at roof level.

Steam is released in bathrooms as a by-product of people’s showering and bathing activities.

Residents carry out various ventilation activities to remove this steam so that ‘everything come back to normal’ [Joy]. For example, in Sabeen’s house, where the children are still young ‘the doors are normally open’ whenever showering takes place. However, as children grow up and require more privacy and personal space this many no longer happen. Joy lives with her teenage and adult children and explains that, ‘when anyone finish having their bath, we just leave the door open’. In this house there is no window in the main bathroom and the resident feels that the PSV extract is insufficient to clear the air after bathing. Although the core component of the ventilation activity remains the same in both houses (opening and closing the bathroom door), this example demonstrates how elements of a practice may evolve as personal circumstances change.

Anthony uses the booster switch ‘for half an hour’ every day, after showering, to remove steam.

This particular routine was only encountered once, and is perhaps facilitated by the fact that Anthony and his wife live in a small flat where the bathroom is close enough to the kitchen (where the booster switch is located) for this to be practical. Other residents open windows after showering or using the bathroom, either to dilute smells or moisture. Steve has developed a succession of steps which in combination allow air to return to ‘normal’ after showering. He leaves both the bathroom door and his bedroom window open so that moisture is diluted with external air. He explains his need to do this in terms of his preference for hot showers.

‘When I’m having a shower and that, I like it hot, anyway, and when I finish I just leaves the door open and my bedroom door. And with the window open the air just gets in there and makes it back to normal you know what I mean, gets the condensation out then, the steam out.’