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Stop Cooling an Empty House: The Next Smart-Home Saving

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  Stop Cooling an Empty House: The Next Smart-Home Saving We’ve learnt to control our heating. Now perhaps our homes need to learn how to manage summer. For years, the smart-home conversation in Britain has largely been about winter. Smart thermostats turn the heating down when we go out. Individual radiator controls stop us heating unused rooms. Timers prevent boilers and heat pumps running unnecessarily. Some systems even learn when we normally arrive home and make sure the house is comfortable just before we walk through the door. It makes perfect sense. So why, as our summers become hotter, do we often approach cooling in a completely different way? A room becomes unbearably warm, so we switch on a fan. If that does not work, perhaps we buy a portable air-conditioning unit. Then we leave it running while we cook dinner downstairs, go shopping, sit in the garden or even leave the house entirely. We would think twice about leaving the central heating blasting away in an empty hou...
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Can We Build a House That Survives a Wildfire?

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  Can We Build a House That Survives a Wildfire? As Britain becomes hotter and drier, perhaps “fire resilience” needs to join insulation, flooding and overheating on the home-improvement list Over the past few days, I have watched something happening in Britain that, not very long ago, I would have associated more readily with Australia, California, Greece or southern France. I have watched wildfires reach British streets and destroy British homes . The images from Stourbridge in the West Midlands have been particularly disturbing. Nineteen homes were reported destroyed and another 18 damaged after fire spread from parched vegetation into residential areas. Once a major fire is racing towards a house, driven by wind through tinder-dry vegetation, there may be remarkably little that the homeowner—or even firefighters—can do. On 14 August 2026, the Government took the extraordinary step of sending an Emergency Alert across England and Wales warning people not to light barbecues...
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