INDUSTRY VIEWFINDER: WORKING TOWARDS ZERO CARBON 45
A report from the offi cial advisors the Climate Change Committee says the UK government must drive down energy bills and reduce climate-warming emissions by insulating more homes. They say that the government’s current insulation programme is “shocking”.
farm-house restoration, found that heat loss was reduced by 56% after installing only very thin layers of injected foam. According to Leighton, “The effect of the soft and elastic, open-cell spray foam insulation on a draughty roof is similar to a person wearing a down-fi lled jacket. The jacket is light and relatively thin but the feathers inside trap tiny particles of warm air and protect the body from cold”. In Liverpool, Stephen Finnegan, director of the Zero Carbon Research Initiative and associate professor in sustainable architecture at the University of Liverpool’s School of Architecture, was similarly nervous about spray foam insulation when he embarked on a major refurbishment of a large and run-down Victorian house.
Like many people who live in period
houses, he didn’t want to spoil its appearance inside and out with insulation panels, but he knew that he had to insulate the property to make it liveable. He investigated a number of interventions including spray foam insulation for the cellar and attic ceilings.
In Liverpool, Stephen Finnegan, Director of the Zero Carbon Research Initiative turned to spray foam insulation for the refurbishment of this large Victorian house
Although the results of installation of the foam insulation have yet to be fi nely assessed, Finnegan says that the effect of using it in the cellar ceiling and roof space has been remarkable. “The house has kept a really comfortable temperature during winter. We installed a wet underfl oor heating system downstairs and conventional radiators upstairs. We’re running the boiler at a low temperature and it’s working well. I can sit in the attic rooms in a t-shirt with the heating
“The effect of using spray foam insulation it in the cellar ceiling and roof space has been remarkable” Cellar under-fl oor area shown
off and it’s not a problem,” he says. “There’s no way that I could have done that before.” According to Finnegan, performance of the house will be monitored over a 12-month period. He then aims to convert to a 100% electrically powered home by installing an air source heat pump (ASHP). “If we can run the boiler at 55oC then we know that it could potentially be replaced by an ASHP. We will then support this using solar PV panels and battery storage to minimise the amount of electricity purchased from the grid.” Said Finnegan.
Cost competitive system
Paddy Leighton estimates that the cost of installing HBS H2 Foam Lite averages out at about £25/m2 (for 100 mm thick insulation) and is far quicker and less intrusive to fi t than conventional insulation methods – a 100 m2 roof could be covered in a morning. As heating costs and concerns about carbon emissions soar, any product that can mitigate these problems has to be considered. “I’ve overseen more than 40,000 successful domestic,
installations”
commercial and industrial Leighton says. “There are
hundreds of thousands of houses in this country that could be retrofi tted. We just need to convince the industry.” For
more H2Foam information Lite products
about HBS please
visit:
huntsmanbuildingsolutions.com/en-GB/ products/open-cell-insulation
Under eaves area prior to spraying FoamLite expands 100-fold in seconds
0485 500 668
www.huntsmanbuildingsolutions.co.uk
ADF11_Icynene / Huntsman_DPS
Adv.indd 3 ADF NOVEMBER 2022 31/10/2022 11:43
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
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