Performance evaluation of homes

With increasingly stringent demands on energy performance in housing, developers and refurbishment professionals now need to know that their designs will realise the desired energy performance.

This section provides easy access to our guidance on how to measure the energy performance of homes and regular updates on all our monitoring activities.

Monitoring protocols

The Energy Saving Trust has developed a wholehouse carbon and energy monitoring protocol to determine how the key features of new designs - such as enhanced airtightness, improved fabric insulation levels, renewable energy - contribute to the improved energy performance of the new designs.

Guidance

Standards of thermal insulation in new and refurbished housing have improved greatly. These, coupled with a wider range of construction methods, make the performance of the building envelope a key component in achieving energy efficiency.

Monitoring projects

Good Homes Alliance Monitoring Project

We are working in partnership with the Good Homes Alliance (GHA) to support them and their academic partners in an exciting research and development project to monitor and evaluate the performance of a number of high-level sustainable newbuild homes. The Energy Saving Trust’s monitoring protocols are being used across four GHA member developer’s sites representing a range of construction types to help understand any gap in design aspiration and as-built performance - monitoring will take place through 2010 and 2011.

Read on to find out about the Good Homes Alliance Monitoring Project

Retrofit for the Future

In March 2009, the Technology Strategy Board launched an SBRI initiative ‘Retrofit for the Future’ under the Low Impact Building Innovation Platform. The challenge is to develop methods to refurbish UK social housing stock to help meet the UK Government target reductions in Greenhouse Gas emissions and energy use.

Read more about Retrofit for the Future