From my Substack diary for Monday, 22nd. June 2026

Up at 0530 this morning for some free coolth! Bright sunshine at that time – as now – but the outside (shade) temperature was only 19 degrees, so opened doors and windows on the shaded side of the bungalow. Still enjoying relative cool three hours later.

I am lucky to live in a part of the world where environmental air quality is generally good, especially as I live in the suburbs with relatively low-density housing and no through-traffic. However, indoor air quality is fair rather than good at the moment, primarily due to temperature and sunlight – and plastic windows. But I am not too concerned about that – it could be worse.

The best of my indoor air quality monitors is in the sitting room and that is where the temperature and effect of sunlight are reducing air quality, with higher than usual levels of volatile organic compounds. The sitting room is dual-aspect, a fancy term that means two of the four walls have extensive areas of glazing. Sadly, my windows and French doors are plastic – uPVC – which is a particularly foul and environmentally damaging material. PVC off-gasses throughout its life but this is particularly pronounced in weather conditions such as we have now. The detector in my sitting room is picking this up, but for the time being is ameliorated by having the French doors open. However, by about 11am I will have to close them as the sun will be on that side of the house and I want to avoid too much internal heat gain.

In the longer term, and as heatwaves become more common and more severe, the health conditions caused or exacerbated by uPVC off-gassing will increase; these are typically respiratory conditions and allergies such as asthma, but the list of medical conditions is long.

At a fundamental level we live in homes in order to gain protection from the outside world. However, too many homes in Britain continue to be built to a poor standard, and most of the homes built today will fail to protect us from future climate change, whether this is extremes of heat or of cold or of wind and rain. I would suggest that that is a pretty fundamental failure, especially when we know how to build climate-resilient homes – but refuse to do so.