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30 year old homes still score high on energy efficiency |
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30 Jun 2011, 10:57 AM
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A new study carried out at the University of Salford shows that a 30 year-old pioneering low-energy housing design is still 50% more energy-efficient than UK average. The research demonstrates that the low-cost, ‘tea cosy’ houses set the standard for 2016 style carbon zero housing. Built in the early 1980s by Salford City Council, the 200 prototype houses were designed to provide economic, low-energy housing suitable for low-income urban tenants. Today the ordinary-looking terraced dwellings remain 40% more energy-efficient than those compliant with the 2010 building regulations, and will still be 25% more efficient when the proposed 2013 regulations take effect.
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The fundamental principles of the design, known as The Salford House, could also help achieve the Zero Carbon Homes Standard announced by Housing Minister Grant Shapps last month for little additional cost. The reason why The Salford House continues to outperform most other UK homes is their simple yet innovative construction method. A high thermal capacity internal structure, protected by a highly insulated well-sealed envelope, produces a ‘tea cosy’ effect that maintains constant equable temperatures with controllable ventilation.
This high thermal and a near air-tight method of construction, designed over a decade before the Passivhaus Standard was first conceived in Germany, is achieved through the use of dense concrete block inner walls and floors of suspended concrete blocks together with a thermal insulation thickness of 200mm around the entire structure. The result is an internal mass and thermal capacity about four times traditional values.
The large thermal capacity reduces temperature fluctuations and permits flexible heating strategies. This is in marked contrast to timber-framed constructions which can have a thermal capacity of around one quarter of traditional values, and suffer large temperature fluctuations.
The research paper (The Salford Low-Energy House: learning from our past) outlines how staff from the University’s Energy Hub facility revisited the experimental houses last year and examined their ongoing performance. They found that the thirty year old Salford Houses still uses 75% less energy than the UK average for space heating and that they are 50% more efficient with regards to all energy use. In addition The Salford House only requires a heating season of three to four months, against a UK average of seven.
The University of Salford’s Dr Phillip Brown, part of the Energy Hub research team, said:
“There is little difference in cost between traditionally thermally inefficient build and the relatively simple Salford House low-energy design. With many house builders currently worried that new homes are going to be much more expensive to build in order to meet the government’s ambitious targets, the Salford model shows that this need not be the case. The Salford House cost just seven percent more to construct than identical neighboring properties, and yet saves fifty percent on energy costs every year.”
Dr Brown’s comments about both the potential energy and cost savings that could be achieved through adopting The Salford House principles within future new build also appear to match the aspirations of the current government.
In October 2010 Chris Huhne addressed a conference dedicated to the issue of passive housing design and announced: “We will ensure that all new homes post-2016 can be zero-carbon, without letting the costs of new build stop the sustainable development we need. And we will introduce a minimum standard for fabric energy efficiency, based on the recent consultation on the Code for Sustainable Homes. This will help us to break away from the model of homes being developed at low cost, but which are expensive to run.”
Such an appetite for innovative, cost effective low-energy housing design today is in sharp contrast to the political, social and economic climate of the late seventies and early eighties when Salford City Council approached the University to develop affordable and energy-efficient social housing.
As The Salford House report points out: “We are now in the midst of a decade of rapid change driven by the concerns of climate change and the requirements placed upon the UK by EU legislation. In the 1970s Salford City Council responded locally in a socially just and innovative manner to the urgent needs of their tenants. This led to the development of housing which was decades ahead of its time. Thirty years on it is, once again, urgent necessity that is the driver for EU, national and local action.”
Copies of The Salford Low-Energy House: learning from our past can be downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/5wf4r74
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| Positive review of this story |
Bee  |
1 Jul 2011, 10:09 AM |
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Quick to read highlights - optional link to in-depth report Really interesting report. There is no excuse for not insulating a house properly; our new extension requires very little heating but the 50 year old original house with suspended wooden floor and 30 year old double glazing is draughty and rarely warms sufficiently.
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