Thousands of families across the UK are living in houses which are not sufficiently warm, weather tight or thermally efficient. With buildings responsible for almost 50% of the UK’s energy consumption and carbon emissions it has become even more pressing to refurbish and make sustainable our ageing social housing stock.
As developers, how do you maintain and improve the thermal efficiency of poor housing in a manner that is cost effective and in a reliable way so that they exceed the Government’s Decent Homes Standard and work towards the Government’s agenda on energy performance.
Comuunity Energy Saving Programme
The community energy saving programme (CESP) has been created as part of the government’s Home Energy Saving Programme and has been designed to promote a ‘whole house’ approach in terms of the installation on innovative energy efficiency measures. It will ensure that at least 1.5 tonnes of CO2 will be saved per household. For existing solid wall homes, this means reducing heat losses particularly through the introduction of much higher standards of insulation.
A thermally efficient solution
The city of Nottingham is a great example of how committed local authorites are in raising the standard of the energy efficiency of their housing stock. Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO), Nottingham City Homes, aims to spend tens of millions of pounds by 2015 improving the city’s 29,000 council homes. The decent homes programme, known locally as secure Warm Modern, is using a portion of this funding to improve the thermal efficiency of Nottinghams council homes. Before improvement work started, Nottingham City Homes (NCH) commissioned regeneration specialist Frank Haslam Milan (FHM) to carry out an on site analysis of the thermal performance of an end terrace property in the Aspley area of the city. Using the Thermal Performance Report of this trial house, NCH and the Nottingham Energy Partnership (NEP) came up with an energy/carbon emission improvement strategy for the two storey property, designed to improve the thermal perfomance of the house. This strategy incorporated a range of insulation products from market leader Celotex. Before and after thermographic images were taken of the property to see how the application of Celotex had improved the thermal properties of the property. The before images had indicated heat loss through the walls, roof and around the edging of the windows. Refurbishment work therfore included installing insulation to the external solid brick walls, window reveals and roof voides. High performance Celotex PL4000 was specified in thickness of 65mm and 20mm in the solid brick walls. With its plasterboard finsh it is ideal for refurbishment projects where speed of installation and long term energy savings are or paramount importance.
Proven Results
The “after” thermal images show how the installation of the new insultaion has had a significant positive impact on the reduction of heat loss in the property. Following these results a programme of work has now been developed to improve the thermal performance of 800 council homes in the Aspley are of Nottingham through the application of Celotex insulation. The project is being funded by Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), through CESP. This recent approach looks like a winning combination and ultimately a solution that can help transform a deprived area into a low carbon community.
