BSRIA monitors Retrofit for the Future project
Monitoring equipment supplied by BSRIA Instrument Solution is playing a key role in the Retrofit for the Future project commissioned by the Technology Strategy Board. Typical dwellings will retrofitted with the latest energy-saving systems and monitored closely while the dwelling is occupied to accurately asses energy savings.
BSRIA Instrument Solutions has developed a complete wireless monitoring package to minimise interference with the lives of the occupants over the 2-year testing period.
The first home in this project is a 3-storey mid-terrace house in a row of five in Aylesbury. Built in the early 1990s for Places for People and still owned by them, it was heated by off-peak electric storage heaters supplemented by panel heaters and with hot water by a single electric immersion heater. The house had an SAP rating of 62. Monitoring will provide date about energy performance at 5-minute intervals for two years.
Improvements include vastly improved insulation — including new doors, windows and insulated internal linings. Solar thermal and PV panels have been integrated into the roof. A heat pump extracts heat from exhaust air. Ventilation and cooling in Summer is achieved by opening windows.
The basic monitoring package consists of three internal sensors and one external sensor for temperature and humidity, a CO2 sensor in the main living room and a data hub to accumulate data.
The Aylesbury house also has two sensors to monitor the supply and extract for the MVHR system, two pyranometers to measure solar irradiation on the different roof planes where the solar panels are situated, heat-flux measurements on the solar heating and hot-water system and seven electrical sub-meters for lights, MVHR and PV solar pumps.
BSRIA Instrument Solutions is already committed to supplying 53 basic testing packages to the TSB, most enhanced to particular requirements. In all, 86 homes are to be monitored, with a timescale extending into 2013.
