Every building has the potential to use less energy and ultimately save money. The vast majority of UK buildings in fact could reduce their energy consumption by up to 75%.
The key to identifying your potential savings is to find the size of energy demand on your home, and what proportion of that energy is being lost trying to meet the demand. From there, we can work out ways to reduce the demand and explore the most efficient methods to supply it.
Not sure where to start? Woohoo can support you with all aspects of this, and in this article, we’ll look at the different benefits of an energy health check and how we can support you in making your home more efficient.
Assessing the building fabric
In the local climate of the Lancaster for example, most of the energy usage for a historic building will come from heating it in the winter months. The amount of heat required is proportional to how big the building is and what each part of the building is used for.
Most methods, such as EPC, use theoretical values based on inspection. We always aim to find out what is really happening by comparing modelled information to bill, temperature and humidity data, occupant reports or thermal camera data. This helps us to quickly establish if a cavity wall has insulation for example, or whether a ceiling with no access has insulation.
By seeing the actual performance through this method, we highlight the areas losing energy and ensure the fabric improvements will save you money. Knowing the sizes of walls, windows, floors etc, help to estimate the cost of a retrofit against the cost of saving.
Assessing the fabric: Site render
Assessing the heating system
Now that we’ve established the fabric performance, we can model against the internal gains for your building, such as occupancy, appliance usage and solar gain, to calculate the heat requirement and how much energy the building’s heating system should be using.
With measured bill data, we can find out if the system is performing and if not, where the heat is being lost. We can then establish what technologies are available for the future to save costs.
Assessing the heating: radiators
Taking the holistic approach
There are many other ways that improvements can save energy but also have a wider impact. For example, a well-maintained roof will keep water off walls and in turn will use less energy, but it will also extend a building’s life and reduce damage.
Improving a heating system in an office building to make it more comfortable may not have a significant energy reduction but could lead to healthier occupants, improved occupancy or attract more customers with its efforts to reduce emissions.
Our aims for building improvements look beyond just energy reduction and look at factors such as extending building lifespan, improving comfort and occupancy and reducing lifecycle emissions.
Taking the holistic approach: listed barn for redevelopment
Assessing the risks and values
Often with historic buildings, every change carries a risk. Well publicised risks can include mould appearing after retrofitting or building fabric decaying because moisture has been trapped by insulation.
When planning improvements to your home, these risks should be highlighted, with the intention of mitigating them as much as possible, with a good understanding of the existing building fabric and how it works. Understanding these risks can save significant costs further down the road.
With heritage buildings, there are often heritage values that need to be considered. Take a listed building for example, this could be obtaining listed building consent for solar panels and underfloor heating. By working with a heritage consultant who understands these values and required consents, this can often save money by not stalling projects or having to undo work.
Assessing the options
Once your options have been established and indicative costs understood, this can be balanced against the risks and savings. We can support you in looking at market information, government and local strategies and current technologies available.
This can all come together to provide you with the best information to make informed choices on how to upgrade your building, to give you the best and most efficient improvements.
Assessing the options: comparison of heat loss areas
Looking to the future
To meet the Government’s climate goals, many buildings will be heavily retrofitted over their lifetime, and it’s very possible for them to have minimal heating and cooling costs.
We aim to help plan these building’s futures to make them great spaces for their occupants and have a reduced environmental impact. Our role is to help you understand your building better and give it a bright future.
Looking to the future: solar panels
We’d love to hear from you, contact Woohoo and we can discuss your upcoming project!