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ROUND TABLE REPORT
at least two years, due to concerns from SMEs around obtaining materials in competition with volume housebuilders. However, for suppliers there are obvious benefi ts to the jump in performance required: David Clarke said that what were potentially “overly effi cient products” which have been on the shelf are now seeing the light of day.
Air source heat pumps are likely to be the de facto space heating solution for the FHS in 2025, as gas is phased out. However, Carr feared that the need to provide photo evidence of installation effectiveness might be the “biggest issue” for housebuilders; “you need to get ducting spot on, but on a building site, it’s whoever’s there fi rst that takes priority.”
Housebuilder Chris Carr said Building Control should brought into planning meetings “because planners aren’t interested in how it physically works”
to specify windows ‘future-proofed’ against the Future Homes Standard. “If they’ve got to make a decision between a product that is going to meet the new Building Regs but also potentially what is required with Future Homes, or saving a bit of money, it’s very diffi cult when it’s something they’re not necessarily going to immediately see the benefi t of.” However, one area where the FHS would lead to a real
benefi cial change in specifi cation, according to Bill Hayward, was that products would be treated “as part of a system rather than individually. At the moment, you solve one problem, and create another one,” he said. David Clarke concurred, adding: “It’s counterproductive to just aim for that U-value fi gure, because you may not be taking into account that if you went slightly better, you impact the whole fabric.”
The BSI has found that thermal bridging can lead to up to 30% of heat losses, but there were design challenges. Tzeh Bin Cheong from Shepheard Epstein Hunter said that the practice “did not yet understand the linear cold bridging issue” which has been raised around the Future Homes Standard, when “the larger the volume of the wall insulation, the higher the chance of condensation.” Shikha mentioned that Hawkins\Brown is upskilling staff on thermal bridging to investigate some of the mysteries including around the software, and Chris Perry cautioned that “massive cavities” can result in needing bespoke ties and other structures which increase embodied carbon.
Chris Carr expressed concern that in-demand bungalow designs were unlikely to be achievable under the FHS, but advocated that brick slips could produce bigger cavities without losing fl oor area. He’s lobbying the Government to push back the FHS deadline by
Simon Blackham of Recticel said the main issues for delivering the Future Homes Standard were “skills,” and identifying what ‘net zero ready’ actually means. He expressed concern that progress to the Standard was “piecemeal,” and was beleaguered by the fi ve year political cycle. He said that ‘zero bills’ houses are “where we should be going,” given the extent of the climate challenge, but our round table showed there was still a long way to travel on this road before the industry is ready to deliver such performance levels. Bill Hayward, echoing Chis Carr earlier, suggested that “maybe the answer is to reduce what we are trying to achieve; if you try to achieve too much, you end up achieving nothing. Maybe we need to break it down into smaller parts.” One fi nal moment of consensus around the table, among several
others, was that with Government not having “made its mind up” on the way forward, the Future Homes Standard is unlikely to be implemented in 2025, though the industry may be technically able to achieve it. g
We would like to thank our round table sponsors IDSystems, Schöck and Recticel for supporting Building Insights LIVE
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE ROUND TABLE
• Shikha Bhardwaj: “It’s looking at net zero carbon as a bigger challenge than just focusing on compliance, and instead using compliance as a layer of it, not the entire solution. And we need to focus on comfort.”
• Chris Perry: “It’s even more the case with Part L and Part O that the early stages of the designs are so important, and you need to have everyone on board to create some- thing that works in a holistic way, and so you don’t come into problems later.”
• Chris Carr: “Planners need to work together with Building Control offi cers, and we need exemplars to share good practice of design and delivery. We also need to delay the Future Homes Standard by two years minimum, due to materials issues.”
• Simon Blackham: “There’s a need for clarity; it’s not beholden on manufacturers to approve something which we haven’t designed to be used in a certain way.”
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