Scottish building contractor Cruden Building & Renewals has started work on the BRE Refurbished House, one of ten demonstration homes being built on the BRE Innovation Park @ Ravenscraig that will be used to shape future housing in the country.
Using historical design information and traditional materials, the builders will recreate a full-scale ‘four-in-a-block’ typical Scottish apartment dwelling, of which there 265 thousand in the country and 3 million of a similar design in England.
This type of dwelling, where there are two flats on the ground floor and two on the first floor, is one of the worst performing apartment building types both thermally and acoustically in the UK.
Each of the four compartments of the dwelling will be refurbished employing different retrofit approaches and using different materials and technologies. The units will then be monitored over time to provide real performance data on energy efficiency and thermal comfort, indoor air quality, acoustic performance and cost. The embodied energy of the materials used in the retrofit will also be considered.
The project, which is being delivered by BRE Scotland, Edinburgh Napier University and Historic Scotland will enable a robust assessment to be made on the cost effectiveness of fabric upgrades for this building style, for walls, windows, roofs and services. The adopted methodology will also allow an upscaling approach to be developed which can be rolled out to multiple dwellings making them more energy efficient, less costly to run and with minimum carbon emissions.
BRE Scotland Director David Kelly said: "Scotland has a high level of fuel poverty, with approximately 25% of homes spending more than 10% of their total income on energy bills. This is a shocking and unacceptable situation and one which we aim to change with the host of new knowledge this project will generate. We are delighted to be working with Cruden Building & Renewals on this project. Their expertise and knowledge will be hugely valuable in informing the outcomes of this research."
Allan Callaghan, Managing Director of Cruden Building & Renewals, said: "We are pleased to be co-funding and developing the ‘Refurbished’ house at the BRE Innovation Park @ Ravenscraig. We have jointly created a unique project which will not only provide design, specification and cost data for retrofit installation, but allow post completion monitoring of performance.
"Ultimately we hope to achieve a measure of cost effective improvements for Scotland’s and the UK’s existing housing stock that will improve the quality of people’s lives, address the fuel poverty issue and reduce carbon emissions in line with Government targets."
