scripted central heating installations and why they matter faye wade ucl energy institute...

Scripted central heating installations and why they matter

Faye Wade UCL Energy Institute

Supervisors: Michelle Shipworth, Dr Russell Hitchings, Dr David Shipworth

“All I know is you turn the thermostat round and

it’ll come on when you want to. You just click it

round and then it fires up.”

“I have to go in the cupboard with ladders etc”

“we go in with a torch”

“it is in a cupboard with the tank and I can’t see half

the dials”

Rathouse and Young, 2004

Treloar, 2006

“…the design and production of a new entity amounts to a process of configuring its user, where ‘configuring’ includes defining the identity of putative users, and setting constraints upon their likely future actions.”

Woolgar, 1991

Scripted central heating installations and why they matter

Faye Wade faye.wade.10@ucl.ac.uk

The installation process is scripted by numerous heterogeneous actants.

These scripts may be contested or re-written.

This has implications for the potential performance of domestic space heating practices.