Open House for new construction technologies

The ‘open house’ will see two Midlands companies – Veritherm of Malvern and Oldbury's Hadley Group – coming together to showcase innovations as part of the University of Wolverhampton’s Built Environment Climate Change Innovations (BECCI) programme, which aims to test and trial new technologies to improve buildings’ energy performance.

Tom Fenton, founder and chief executive at Veritherm, said: “With houses accounting for 30 per cent of the UK’s total energy use, 27 percent of UK carbon dioxide emissions and around 24 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, developers are always looking for ways to improve the environmental performance of our homes.

“Energy Performance Certificates outline the current and potential environmental performance of a property and form part of residential sales packs but these figures are base on theoretical design assumptions and there is currently no way of independently verifying this information.

“Our experience suggests the gap between these theoretical ratings and real-life energy performance is typically around 200-300%, meaning carbon emissions are often two-to-three times higher than they should be, along with residents’ energy bills.

“As part of our work at Malvern-based technology accelerator BetaDen, we have developed a new twelve-hour test that allows owners or occupiers of a property to test the actual thermal performance of their home, giving an accurate fuel efficiency rating similar to those awarded to vehicles.”

The ‘open house’ will provide an opportunity for housing associations, developers, councils, mortgage and insurance providers to visit a prototype house built by Hadley Group using MMC.

Ben Towe, group managing director at Hadley Group, added: “With research suggesting a housing gap of over a million (the difference between the number of residential properties in the UK and the number needed for everyone to have a decent home to live in), developers and councils are also exploring different ways to increase the availability of affordable housing across the country.

“While new building techniques, such as MMC have been shown to reduce construction costs and offer a range of environmental advantages over their traditionally counterparts, adoption has been slow due to reluctance by mortgage companies’ and insurers’ to cover these homes.

“The open house provides an opportunity for developers, housing associations, councils, lenders and insurers to see new technologies in action, helping educate them about these alternative construction styles.

“Thanks to Veritherm’s new technology, we will also be recording real-time data on the thermal performance of the property, allowing us to use real-world performance data to improve building energy performance and demonstrate how innovative new construction methods can not only play a part in solving the affordable housing crisis but also in a more environmentally-friendly way.”

The prototype house was originally constructed as part of a collaborative project between Hadley Group and Walsall Housing Group. This new collaboration was arranged by BEECI to promote sustainable building technologies, and will also see the University carry out academic research on the prototype home, alongside Veritherm.

Dr Paul Hampton, director of the BEECI project, said: “The collaboration between the Hadley Group, Veritherm and the University of Wolverhampton BEECI project strengthens our commitment to engaging with industry to advance new knowledge into the built environment sector.

“Using the prototype home as a test facility for innovation products such as Veritherm is an excellent way to achieve this adoption of innovation.”