Blog – Humblebee

humblebee hive – retrofit #9

Written on September 7, 2023.

The Shutter Saga – Handmade in Manchester It’s been a while, but here it is… The post about external shutters! (Incidentally, while the retrofit team were installing them and I was pondering this article, Spotify suggested this “Made in Manchester” playlist – why not give it a listen...

humblebee hive – retrofit #8

Written on December 14, 2022.

Modelling and Monitoring Haha, despite the picture above, not that kind of modelling… Give me some numbers! Having given you lots of story, I thought it was time I gave you some performance figures, both calculated and measured… Some might say I’m not a typical engineer,...

humblebee hive – nearly there

Written on May 29, 2022.

Ta da! The scaffold is down!

humblebee hive – retrofit #7

Written on May 8, 2022.

Seal tight, Ventilate right It’s the retrofit mantra. And we did notice how quickly it got stuffy once the windows were in and the EWI was all but sealed. We were still getting chilly inside, in part because in order to have fresh air we had to have the windows open, while the rest of the...

humblebee hive – retrofit #6

Written on April 15, 2022.

Uplifting tales about small challenges leading to better outcomes One of the best courses I went on during my time at Arup was the Design School. I was only a grad + something at the time (yup, it’s been going for over 20 years!), and we had a lot of fun, away on residential for a couple...

humblebee hive – retrofit #5

Written on April 10, 2022.

Planning and Building Control What’s the point of the Planning system? It’s to decide nationally and locally what we want to see and prioritise in our built environment. So in the face of a climate emergency and biodiversity loss, what is the most immediate action government could...

humblebee hive – retrofit #4

Written on March 24, 2022.

Groundworks, drama and trauma Last week was less fun as it started with a trip to A&E for one of the site workers. Our bricklayer Tim had been keen to get going with backfilling the trench because the scaffolders wanted level ground before turning up, but he unexpectedly tested the sharpness...

The War on Plastic – hey, what’s the problem?

Written on November 3, 2019.

Plastic, a journey across the seven seas… So… what’s the problem with plastic? Why has our wonder material been making so many waves at the moment. And is it really that bad? Aren’t alternatives just as bad if not worse (this I hear a lot…). Here goes… According to the BBC documentary...

I have a new gadget… a thermal imaging camera!

Written on January 27, 2019.

Or the use of one I should say… I hate being cold. I’m pretty “nesh” as they might describe me in these parts, or “frileuse” in my family…. So maybe it was accidentally on purpose that I fell into my job as a “comfort” engineer. I might therefore be forgiven for my mission to provide as...

What’s in a name?

Written on January 24, 2019.

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet…” So here it is – my brand name launch… welcome to humblebee! Why, I hear you whisper? As soon as I told my children I was going to stop working for Arup (“mummy, that means you’re free!”… heart strings properly tugged),...