14 COMMENT
carried out in the first place. As an industry, we have the skills and
knowledge to deal with the performance gap, but first we must see a change in the culture onsite and a change in the behav- iour of builders with regard to product substitution and paying attention to getting the thermal details built right. There also needs to be significant improve- ments in how we accurately, and cheaply, measure energy performance. If the technology was developed that
challenges. It is both relatively expensive as a fuel, and the grid is unlikely to have the capacity for peak heating demand in all UK homes, if we continue to build homes as we currently do. Therefore, the solution will be to build
homes which have a dramatically reduced thermal heat loss through much higher fabric performance than current practice. This is why any additional heat losses through a fabric performance gap will be a huge concern, because if we can’t get it right when building to current standards, how much worse is it likely to get when in
the near future we have to start building to even higher thermal standards. Research shows that on average UK
homes are losing 60 per cent more heat through their fabric than would be expected. There are some design, measurement and calculation issues, but the major concern is product substitution and, put simply, we are not consistently building what we design, or we are not detailing the right products in the right places. There are also issues with site skills and workmanship; when you don’t build correctly it undermines the good work
could compare heat loss from homes in a way that is directly comparable to what has been designed, in a way that was accurate, cost-effective and at scale, then this would make housebuilders be aware of the conse- quences. But also, more importantly, it would be able to tell them if there is a major problem and discover where that problem lies so that they are armed with the infor- mation necessary to build homes that actually perform to high standards. It’s critical that we create drivers for this
to be taken seriously, and adopt a culture change across the industry. Only then will we end up having homes with low heating demand, which can be driven by small electric heating sources, and stand any chance of meeting both our future housing needs and our national carbon targets.
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