INDUSTRY COMMENT SOCIAL HOUSING RETROFITS: HOW DATA DELIVERS ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Achieving the government’s 2030 goal of making all rented homes EPC-C rated and delivering Net Zero by 2050 puts enormous pressure on the local authorities and housing providers responsible for retrofitting the UK’s four million social homes. Lisa Cairns, business development & improvement manager at IRT Surveys, part of the Mears Group, discusses how housing providers, consultants and property developers can use data and technology to improve retrofit decision-making processes. Retrofitting the UK’s ageing housing stock to
achieve Net Zero is expected to cost around £104 billion. And while this deadline is still 25 years away, the government intends to make significant progress towards it by ensuring all rented homes meet minimum energy efficiency standards by 2030. Despite there being £6.6 billion in grants and low-interest loans to finance retrofit projects, with four million homes to improve, careful budgetary management will be essential to ensure the most effective energy improvements are implemented. Running at-scale retrofit projects that deliver cost-efficiencies and provide tenants with EPC C-rated homes is not an easy challenge. To avoid the pitfall of implementing unnecessary, ineffective and wasteful measures, the most effectual approach is to identify the energy inadequacies of individual homes, such as missing or inadequate insulation, waterproofing problems, render delamination, porous brickwork, also areas of heat loss in roofs and around windows/doors. Data collected and collated about properties can
provide vital insights into the most successful routes to decarbonisation. It can inform decision- making, ensuring upgrades are tailored to solve the issues of specific properties, while also improving cost efficiencies, in turn providing tenants with warmer homes and smaller energy bills. Modern technology, like thermal imaging, for example, provides accurate visual insights into a property’s energy efficiency issues, the condition of the building fabric and its thermal performance. Moreover, it can detect problems other survey techniques overlook, including draughts, porous brickwork, inadequate insulation, empty wall cavities, water ingress and damp as well as mould risks, not to mention rendering defects. When deployed across a housing stock, a
fabric-first approach provides social housing providers, consultants and contractors alike with the means to make data-driven decisions.
Able to provide comprehensive single-property surveys quickly, thermal imaging is a cost-effective and convenient solution that enables issues to be swiftly rectified
Able to provide comprehensive single-property
surveys quickly, thermal imaging is a cost-effective and convenient solution that enables issues to be swiftly rectified. Being non-invasive, it also requires no scaffolding or after-survey repairs, keeping costs and timescales to a minimum. More recent technologies, like MappIR, also enhance retrofit decision-making. The specialised vehicle with integrated visual and thermal imaging and LiDAR technology, enables streets, housing estates and even entire cities to be surveyed at speed and more importantly at a lower cost for clients, such as local authorities and housing associations where budgets are tight. By assessing the fabric of a building and
identifying issues such as heat loss, water ingress and damp, it can provide valuable data for each property while also mapping extensive areas. Already successfully used for surveying over 10,000 social homes in Milton Keynes, MappIR is an effective surveying option for local authorities or indeed organisations with large property portfolios undertaking improvements to ‘area- based’ schemes and ‘place-based’ projects. While thermal imaging and MappIR improve retrofit data collection, they are especially effective when used in conjunction with cutting-edge software applications for retrofit modelling, such as DREam. Analysing the data, such software
applications are capable of providing a clear understanding of each property’s specific energy-efficiency requirements. As a result, not only can improvements be accurately costed, but retrofit projects can be matched to available funding opportunities. What’s more, the specialist retrofit software can also track a project’s progress, monitoring the installation of
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improvements, highlighting energy efficiency and carbon-cutting advancements, and continuously providing live up to date data on the current energy efficiency status of properties. Armed with all this information, housing providers are much better placed to deliver project energy efficiencies and environmental targets in the most cost-effective way in tandem with ensuring their tenants live in healthy, warm affordable homes. Thermal imaging and retrofitting software were recently deployed together in the South of England for a project which involved retrofitting 200 homes of differing construction fabric. Following the analyses of the properties’ thermal images and the identification of insulation issues, heat loss and other defects, the data was processed by the software. Here, mapping and filtering tools were used to evaluate the issues and highlight the most appropriate retrofit pathway. This information allowed the housing provider to categorise properties, prioritise improvements and identify and apply for relevant financing.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCED PARTNERS Social housing providers will need to deliver energy efficiency upgrades at scale and speed to meet the 2030 EPC-C and 2050 net zero deadlines. Retrofit projects of magnitude, however, are challenging to plan and manage. One way of easing the complexity is by working with a supplier that has a successful track record of delivering projects for organisations, both private and public. One that will not only ensure a fast and efficient service is delivered, but one that can leverage the latest technologies, both hardware and software, to deliver an assured complete solution that provides invaluable retrofitting insights.
https://irtsurveys.co.uk/ ENERGY & SUSTAINABILITY SOLUTIONS - Winter 2024 5
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