| Planned occupancy | Meden Vale property has 2 adults, 1 working, and 2 children of school age. Warsop property has 3 adults, 2 working, 1 at home, and 1 child of school age. |
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| Space heating strategy | As the property is so well insulated and air tight, it is intended that the whole house heat recovery ventilation system will keep the temperature consistent for most months of the year. When additional heating is required, a small mains gas boiler will provide heating via radiators fitted with iTRVs (intelligent TRVs) which will control temperature based on occupancy patterns and reduce the heating requirement by up to 60%. |
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| Water heating strategy | A solar panel will be the primary source of heat for summer months, with back up from the mains gas boiler when required. |
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| Fuel strategy | Mains Gas. Mains electricity. |
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| Renewable energy strategy | Meden Vale - 0.9kw photovoltaic panel array and 3m2 solar panel to be installed. Warsop - 0.5kw photovoltaic panel array and 3m2 solar panel to be installed. |
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| Passive Solar strategy | The same openings needed to be kept to avoid issues with planning and to make the project replicable. The properties both have main living areas which face South or South East. |
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| Space cooling strategy | Although we will not be actively cooling the properties, by using only external insulation we are ensuring that the thermal mass is still exposed internally in order to reduce the effect of temperature peaks. |
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| Daylighting strategy | Windows have been selected to achieve maximum daylighting transmittance for the UK climate, rather than on U value alone. The external insulation will be painted in a light coloured render in order to reflect light. |
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| Ventilation strategy | Whole house heat recovery ventilation. Opening windows for added ventilation in summer. |
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| Airtightness strategy | Details will be provided by leading East Midlands environmental architect. The air tests which were carried out on the properties gave results of 8 - 9. The main areas of loss were under the bath, the loft hatch, the letter box, and under the windows. The existing wet plaster walls mean that it will not be necessary to use an air tightness membrane. Particular attention will be given to points where services enter the building. Am Profiles are the window manufacturer. They manufacturer a Passivhaus accredited window. Although we are using their other 0.85 U value model due to the daylight transmittance, they are similar to the Passivhaus windows, and AM Profiles will fit themselves using their double membrane air tightness system. |
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| Strategy for minimising thermal bridges | Details will be provided by a leading East Midlands environmental architect for the following junctions on each property: Eaves, foot of wall, party wall, window and door - head, cill and jamb. To avoid thermal bridging arising from the chimney we will insulate the chimney within the loft space, along with back filling the void of the chimney with insulation beads. |
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| Modelling strategy | SAP 2005 was used for modelling. CIBSE Design Guide A 2006 was used for modelling the effect of perimeter below ground insulation. |
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| Insulation strategy | Remove current cavity wall insulation using innovative method, then refill these with more effective neopor beads. Externally insulate the properties with Neopor board and wall reform containing Neopor beads. This will be 250mm externally on Meden Vale and rear of Warsop, and 100mm to front of Warsop. To insulate concrete floors, we intend to use BASF 'Styrodur C' as an external below ground perimeter insulation to depths of up to 1m, depending on the depth of the spread brick foundations. An engineer has been costed in to design this application. 1 room of the Warsop property has a timber floor with a void below. Neopor beads will be blown into this area. |
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| Other relevant retrofit strategies | Our project is intended to be replicable, therefore must be carried out with tenants remaining in the dwelling during the proposed works. This means that whole terraces or estates could be retrofitted together, further reducing costs. We are also aiming to assess the impact of user behaviour and control systems on the carbon emissions of a property. Therefore our proposal includes an innovative control and monitoring system which shuts off appliances and heating with 1 button when people leave the property, and can monitor usage by appliance or circuit level as well as water and heating usage. This will be installed in 2 control properties in order to show the true effect of the control system and the retrofit works. |
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| Contextual information | We can only afford to retrofit 2 properties as part of this project. We had expected the party walls to have cavities, and DGI have developed a new innovative method of filling the party wall from the outside of a property, which we were keen to incorporate. This method has just achieved BBA certification. However we have recently ascertained that the party walls have no cavities. As we are not carrying out internal works, we are therefore not able to insulate the party wall effectively. Although SAP 2005 assumes no heat loss through the party wall, we do expect there will be some. This would not be a problem if all of the terrace, or the pair of semis were all retrofitted which is the way we would see our project working in future. |
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