Sustainable homes toolkit overview
The whole house approach
This approach considers a broad range of aspects: your comfort, your home and its history, indoor air quality and ventilation, moisture inside your home, energy use and bills reduction, as well as CO2 emissions.
This holistic view helps to identify your options and how they can work together. It also reduces the risk of unintended consequences. For example, if the house becomes well insulated and more airtight but the ventilation strategy is not upgraded to provide the right level of ventilation, the risk of mould related issues increases.
Fabric first principles
1. Remedial work
Before any improvement works are carried out, it is essential to make sure that any problems have been fixed and that the house is in a state of good repair. This extends the lifespan of any works to improve your house for as long as possible.
2. Insulation
Once any existing issues are fixed, the building fabric (roofs, walls, floors) should be improved so the heat losses are reduced. This can be done by adding insulation, which has a long life compared to other systems such as boilers, heat pumps, and windows.
3. Airtightness
Airtightness is essential for a comfortable, draught free, and energy efficient house. Improving it means removing all the gaps, cracks, and unwanted openings in the external envelope of your home which comprises the roofs, walls, windows, doors and floors, minimising leaks and draughts.
4. Ventilation
Insulating and increasing airtightness in houses makes ventilation a key consideration for the retrofit works. Good air quality is essential to a healthy, comfortable home; reducing stuffiness and maintaining the health of residents. It is also essential to deal with excessive humidity, which if not controlled, can lead to condensation, damp, mould and health problems such as respiratory illnesses. Appropriately controlled ventilation is required to help maintain good relative humidity levels
5. Building services and renewable energy
Once the house is better insulated and less fuel is used for heating, the building services (heating, water, electricity) should be made more efficient. Building services have relatively short lives compared to insulation and they need to be replaced more regularly. Once the heating demand is lower and the building services are more efficient, the potential for renewable technology should be considered.
Carbon emissions
Reducing the energy demand of your home has the benefit of also reducing carbon emissions. Additionally, there is a financial element to this. In many cases, reducing emissions beyond insulating to reduce energy demand for space heating, requires a switch from onsite domestic fossil fuel boilers and transitioning to electric heating and hot water. Due to the UK’s distorted energy prices (gas is significantly cheaper than electricity), this could have a negative financial impact on your budget and bills, especially if energy demand is not significantly reduced before switching. Focusing on energy use and switching to electricity future proofs your home as we head towards net zero and a renewable and low carbon future.
The toolkit is used in 3 stages:
1. Conversations workshop
Residents should begin with this workshop which lays the foundation for the options workshops, and helps the group to explore their needs and preferences. For larger communities where face to face workshops are impractical, a survey is provided to allow residents to express their views.
2. Options workshop
These workshops explore over 50 retrofit options, and would usually be carried out by a smaller section of the resident community or else just the working group responsible for retrofit planning, who feed back options to the wider community.
3. Retrofit action plan
The various retrofit options can impact each other. Taking a holistic view helps to identify your options and how they can work together and reduces the risk of unintended consequences. Also, some measures are best carried out in a particular sequence, or together, to minimise disruption. Prioritising and planning the order of works should be carried out with a construction professional.