42 ENERGY HOUSE 2.0 SPOTLIGHT


Barratt’s eHome2 features a new closed panel timber frame system developed by Saint Gobain, plus other technologies


conditions remains unique to Salford in the UK, and has not been replicated globally on this scale.


The development of the facility, the changes in the regulations and the industry drive to deliver created a unique set of circumstances that led to the development of a cutting-edge project to explore the future of UK housing.


ENERGY HOUSE 2.0


THE ENERGY HOUSE 2.0 PROJECT PROVIDED A PERFECT OPPORTUNITY FOR THE INDUSTRY TO EXPLORE WHAT THE FUTURE HOMES STANDARD MEANT FOR THE SECTOR


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In 2011 the original Salford Energy House, now called Energy House 1, was developed to look at retrofi t. It is a Victorian property, selected as it represented 20% of the UK housing stock by typology, as well as being the most problematic to retrofi t, often called hard to treat”. The facility represented a major change in how we could understand the impact of different interventions, focussing on manufacturers of all sizes, ranging from major international companies, such as Saint Gobain, to innovative new start-ups.


This approach gave advantages over the existing methods for understanding products. The existing methods were one of two approaches. The fi rst is a bench test; these are individual products such as boilers or insulation, tested in isolation for their performance. The


weakness with this approach is that it did not take into consideration interactions with the environment, other elements of the building, or the risks associated with installation or commissioning. The second existing approach was the fi eld trial. These are often complex and, by necessity, large-scale. Typically, 100 occupied homes will be monitored for two heating seasons, usually between October and March. They can suffer from occupants withdrawing from studies, data loss on multiple sets of equipment, and unpredictability around construction times and weather. They are lengthy and costly, and this can provide diffi culties for innovators who need to understand if their product is performing more quickly than a robust study will allow. The approach taken at Salford Energy House has a number of advantages over the existing approaches. Firstly, repeatable experiments can be conducted. Simply, the house may be tested without an intervention, the intervention is made, and the house can be tested under exactly the same conditions, giving a clear measurable impact of the intervention. An excellent example of this is the boiler turn down project undertaken with the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts, which


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