2021-04-20T05:00:00+01:00 We have the technology to reduce carbon emissions from our homes but take-up is slow - Sam Stacey looks the quality of life benefits and the subsidy options For the most part, houses built before the turn of the 20th century did not have bathrooms. Ablutions required a cold and dark trip to an outhouse, often perched over a pit in the ground. Yet within a few decades, the modern bathroom evolved from a novelty into an almost-universal residential fixture. Thomas Crapper’s valve-and-siphon design was patented in 1891, and found its way into British homes all over the country in the decades preceding World War I.