R1 R&R Sept '16 52 cc

Industry Voice
Warming to sustainability
continued from page 14
Park Road Flats before EWI
These flats, owned by West Lothian
Council, were transformed with
Alumasc’s external wall insulation
systems Swisslab and Swistherm
Park Road Flats after EWI
risk. For the landlord, remediation works for
damp and mould growth can cost as much as
installing the insulation in the first place.
Another area that is negatively impacted
through reduced time and cost of the project
is thermal bridging. In nearly all the EWI
projects that I have seen, insulation is put in
around gas boxes and internet boxes. This is
instead of taking the boxes off, putting the
insulation on and then reinstating the boxes.
This looks unsightly and also produces a
thermal bridge for heat to escape through the
building, potentially causing condensation
issues on the internal wall. Getting RSLs to sign
up to their own low energy retrofit
programme alleviates time issues and costs
can be brought down through the economies
of scale.
To get Viridian Housing Association’s board to
agree to our own retrofit programme, we
asked them to consider three factors:
1) Fuel poverty - the risk to our tenants of
being in a low-energy home. It can affect
their finances and also their health.
2) The Housing, Health and Safety Rating
system classes the ‘extreme cold’ posed by
band F & G properties as a Category 1
Hazard. To be classed as ‘decent’ under the
Decent Homes standard, a dwelling should
be free of Category 1 hazards 1 .
3) The Minimum Energy Performance
Standard legislation has set a bench mark
which RSLs have a moral responsibility to
uphold to their customers and the
community.
1
Page 7, A Decent Home: Definition and guidance for
implementation June 2006 – Update. DCLG.
www.viridianhousing.org.uk
16 Refurb retrofit
magazine
Sep/Oct 2016 R1