House building industry pulls together to improve sustainability success rate » Housing » 24dash.com

As house builders strive to meet the zero carbon homes target, the Good Homes Alliance (GHA) has teamed up with leading academics and other industry experts to launch a joint-venture to help improve the performance and sustainability of new homes.

 The project draws on pioneering, six-year analysis of over 700 units at Stamford Brook¹ near Altrincham, undertaken by Leeds Metropolitan University and University College London (UCL). According to this analysis, disjointed regulations, inadequate architectural tools and poor project management were cited as some of the main reasons for failure to deliver low-energy housing.

The joint venture, known as the LowCarb4Real² project, part of the UrbanBuzz³ programme, will allow members throughout the industry to feedback on design, construction practices and production processes, to help identify and overcome the challenges ahead as we move towards the Governments target for zero carbon new homes by 2016.

Regulation is identified as a key area for improvement, with failures in the system of regulatory advice and disjointed legislation currently causing problems for house builders. Project management on the building site is another major area that requires reform. This includes the assimilation of building services into designs, better integration of the different trades involved and ensuring the sequence of the construction process is logical.

The programme includes a number of invitation-only workshops. Industry members can contact info@goodhomes.org.uk for further information. The next set of workshops will be:

Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, 11 September
University College London, London, 16 September

The programme is also producing detailed guidance, in the form of posters and case studies, about aspects of delivering low carbon homes, including how to achieve air-tightness standards, how to avoid thermal bridges and bypasses, and details of energy-efficient services strategies.

Neil May, Chairman of the Good Homes Alliance, comments: Meeting Levels 3 and above of the Code for Sustainable Homes is extremely complex and, ideally, we need to orchestrate a culture change in the way we approach the entire construction process. Although the houses at Stamford Brook were successfully constructed to use 60% less energy than the average UK home, they still recorded significant heat losses. The findings clearly highlight an urgent need to improve training and education at all levels and we hope that LowCarb4Real will contribute significantly to this aim. It is vital that we share experience across the industry in order to make progress. Post construction monitoring is an important part of this, assisting our understanding of what works and how we can best address any problems. Tackling the industrys weaknesses now will contribute significantly to meeting the targets for sustainable homes and communities in the future.

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Notes to Editors

¹ Stamford Brook is a development of over 700 cavity masonry dwellings being constructed on part of the National Trusts Dunham Massey Estate near Altrincham under a partnership between the National Trust and the developers, Redrow and Bryant. The Centre for the Built Environment at Leeds Metropolitan University conducted six year research project at the development between 2001 and 2007.

² LowCarb4Real is led by University College London and Leeds Metropolitan University in association with the Good Homes Alliance, the National Trust, Taylor Wimpey, Redrow and the University of Leeds.

³ A government funded, two year programme, UrbanBuzz is led by University College London and is bringing together academics and practitioners in the built environment sector to convert research results into new practical tools and processes to help build sustainable communities.

About the Good Homes Alliance

The Good Homes Alliance (GHA) is a group of housing developers, building professionals and other industry supporters whose aim is to close the gap between aspiration and reality by showing how to build and monitor good homes which are sustainable in the broadest sense.

All GHA Developer Members have signed up to meet the GHA criteria which requires at least 50% of all units to be built to the Code for Sustainable Homes Level 3++ - level 3, plus an absolute carbon and energy standard equivalent to a 70% reduction from the average building stock, plus 2 year minimum post occupation monitoring. Members must also sign up to the GHA Charter, which covers other aspects of social and community-scale performance.

The GHA helps to support this industry transformation through education, research & guidance and technical support, and also engages in active policy and promotion activities to ensure that market conditions encourage and incentivise developers to take a more sustainable approach.

Visit www.goodhomes.org.uk

For further information please contact Louise Marshall or Vicki Fletcher at The Wriglesworth Consultancy on 0207 427 1400, l.marshall@wriglesworth.com or v.fletcher@wriglesworth.com