VIEWPOINT
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOMES STANDARD MEAN FOR MERCHANTS?
Matt Neary, National Sales Manager at Knauf Insulation
ALTHOUGH MUCH OF The detail of the Future Homes Standard (FHS) is still under consultation, the direction of travel is clear: new homes built from 2025 will need to produce 75-80% less carbon emissions than homes built under 2013 regulations. While achieving this will be a challenge, it presents an opportunity for builders’ merchants to support their customers with expert advice on the products, systems and strategies that can help housebuilders create homes fit for the future.
That’s why in this month’s column, we will explore how the Future Homes Standard has already impacted the industry and what we can anticipate in 2025.
Building ahead of regulations
The Building Regulations have already been updated in anticipation of the FHS. Updates to Approved Documents F (Ventilation) and L (Conservation of fuel and power) came into full force last year, introducing new standards for ventilation, minimum energy efficiency performance targets for buildings, stricter airtightness requirements and tighter limiting U-values for new fabric elements.
While these new standards are designed to give the industry the opportunity to adjust ahead of the FHS, many groups are arguing for even stricter standards after 2025. Arguably, your customers should be thinking about how to get ahead of regulatory changes where possible.
Energy efficiency and new technologies Energy efficiency is a critical metric and a central goal of the new standards. The heating and powering of the built
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“New homes built from 2025 will need to produce 75-80% less carbon emissions than homes built under 2013 regulations.”
environment accounts for 40% of the UK’s energy usage and this will need to be drastically reduced to hit net zero in 2050. To achieve this, the FHS has proposed making Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) technologies such as heat pumps mandatory for homes built after 2025.
It’s also worth noting that LZC technologies like heat pumps depend on a well-insulated building envelope to be effective. For them to work as designed, the building fabric needs to be right. Heat pumps come in a range of sizes and must be correctly matched to the space they’re heating. If more heat is lost through the building envelope it effectively increases the size of the space, making the heat pump less effective, even if the correct size was specified in the design. Energy and fabric efficiency are intimately connected and
the latest updates to Approved Document L introduced significantly lower U-values for new homes.
Fabric-first
Insulation is a critical part of a home’s fabric and there are several strategies housebuilders can use to help achieve these U-values and lower. For example, increasing insulation in cavities to 150mm wide reduces thermal transmittance and allows housebuilders to choose insulation that’s less prone to air gaps, maximising thermal performance. A fabric-first approach means also considering the air-tightness, ventilation, and solar gain of a building. It’s this holistic approach that will ensure homes are built to meet the FHS.
One of the industry’s biggest challenges in achieving the requirements of the FHS will be the
‘performance gap’ between how homes are designed to perform and how they perform once built. Current statutory guidance uses notional U-values as an example of how to demonstrate compliance. Whilst they are an important indicator of thermal performance, achieving that performance relies on correct installation. So, it’s important for housebuilders to be aware of products like mineral wool insulation, which are easier to install correctly than some other mainstream insulations. New requirements such as the Building Regulations England Part L (BREL) report have been incorporated into SAP (Standard Assessment Procedure) 10.3 to help verify the quality of insulation installations. But as-built data needs to be followed by in-use measurement.
One proposal is to award a ‘Future Homes Standard’ brand to housebuilders who performance test their homes post-occupancy. Although this is still under consultation, it does show that the government wants to move the industry towards in-use data, and the use of tools such as Knauf Energy Solutions’ sensor technology to measure as-built energy efficiency.
Affordable, comfortable, sustainable
We should be aiming to create homes that are comfortable to live in, low-carbon, and affordable to run. The construction industry is going through a period of massive regulatory change. Merchants can use this opportunity to advise their customers on how to go beyond today’s minimum requirements and consider future-proofing their buildings for the Future Homes Standard and beyond. BMJ
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net May 2024
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