Not all insulation was created equal
A whole house assessment tells us how much existing insulation is in the home, but how much additional insulation we install in the long term is dependent on the local infrastructure and what heat sources are available.
Thankfully lots of institutions and industry experts have developed standards with targets to aim for.
Industry Standards
The energy demand of our homes is most accurately described in Kilo-Watt-Hours, per square metre, per year (kWh/m²yr).
The table (right) shows some of the standards that have been developed, the most ambitious being the Passivhaus EnerPHit Standard which sets an energy target of 25kWh/m²yr
Obviously some building are harder to renovate than others, these include listed buildings with period features and small homes that cannot realistically accommodate internal insulation.
Thus targets can best be summarised as
Exemplar Retrofits: 25kWh/m²yr
Best Practice Retrofits: 50kWh/m²yr
Constrained Retrofits: 60kWh/m²yr
The best approach for north-east homes
In the long term we should be aiming for the best practice approach described by LETI, both for the benefits in human comfort, but also because it reduces the demand on the national grid and infrastructure, especially given that our climate is colder than most.
Reducing energy loss to 50 kWh/m²yr in north east homes is really challenging.
Good retrofit design that looks at the building holistically will also consider the needs of the occupants. For example, if the occupants of the home cannot tolerate significant levels of disruption, and therefore aren't prepared to insulate the walls of the home, then it may be possible to meet the target energy use by using other measures to compensate
Case Studies