Specification Guide

Case Study - Energy Efficiency
Liniar Helps Generate Energy For Eco-House Project
As seen on
BBC1’s
100K House
Four years ago, Jo and Andy Thompson were living
in social housing at Unity Gardens, Long Sutton,
Lincolnshire - one of the UK’s first zero-carbon
housing developments.
“We were inspired by the development that we
used to live in, which was eco-friendly with no utility
bills, so for our home, we employed the help of
local architect Dr Jerry Harrall, who is known for his
involvement in eco-friendly developments.”
The weakest area of a house is traditionally the
windows, as this is where most of the heat is lost.
Standard house builders will usually get U-values of
around 1.7W/m 2 K - but the aim for this property was
to get below 1.0W/m 2 K.
“We hadn’t heard of Liniar windows before, but our
architect recommended them as he had used them
in previous projects,” explained Andy.
They found a local installer who ordered windows
with Liniar EnergyPlus profile, plastic composite
spacer bar, triple glazing and low emissivity film on
the inside and outside to achieve a U-value of
0.8W/m 2 K.
By using this combination, the heat loss from the
house was reduced by 50%. The windows were
installed on a layer of external insulation as opposed
to the usual cavity, to further increase thermal
efficiency.
“We’re delighted that the building is ‘Energy Positive’
by 40% - meaning that it generates 40% more energy
than it uses,” said Andy. “Putting that into numbers,
our house generates around 5,000 kWh of energy a
year, but we only use around 3,000 kWh.”
35