Monitoring scheme to assess eco claims
The Good Homes Alliance has launched a monitoring programme to assess whether new build homes are meeting sustainability targets.
The programme will measure the energy performance of five properties on four developments over the next 12 to 18 months. The results, which will be published in autumn 2011, will help house builders ensure their developments meet design standards and perform as intended once tenants have moved in.
The project is sponsored by the Energy Saving Trust and the Communities and Local Government department, and will aim to inform the new government’s sustainability agenda.
Staff from the GHA, Leeds Metropolitan University, UCL and Oxford Brookes University will monitor the fabric performance of the properties using co-heating tests, pressurisation tests and design and construction observations.
A second phase will compare the performance of the properties when occupied against targets set in the code for sustainable homes and standard assessment procedure.
The homes are part of the following developments: the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trusts’s Temple Avenue in York, Crest Nicholson BioRegional Quintain’s One Brighton, Ecos Homes’ Old Apple Store in Somerset and Gentoo’s Racecourse Passivhaus in Sunderland.
The alliance hopes to expand the programme from 2011 onwards to include more properties.
Peter Halsall, acting chairman of GHA, said: ‘The monitoring and feedback of new homes is essential given the transformation of performance needed to achieve low and zero carbon standards, and this will allow us to learn from current strengths and weaknesses.
‘The research findings will help the industry to achieve the high standards of sustainability it has set out to, narrowing the gap between design aspiration and actual energy efficiency once occupied.’
Professor Malcolm Bell, of Leeds Metropolitan University, said: ‘’The monitoring project represents the front line in the drive for real low carbon homes. Too many developers are promoting themselves as builders of low carbon homes but do not have a clue as to whether the homes they build actually perform in practice.’
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