Research cooperation to support the development of multidisciplinary techniques to critically review air permeability in dwellings in the UK into a comprehensive database
Academics
- Anna Mavrogianni, The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, The Bartlett/Built Environment
Very little is known to date about the distribution of air leakage of existing dwellings in the UK and no comprehensive database of air leakage values by dwelling construction age and typology exists. The APACHE project enhances our understanding of the magnitude of air leakage in the existing housing stock and offers suggestions for future data collection studies and legislative actions. The outcomes of the study are valuable for building designers and policy makers as it will allow them to take air permeability into account when designing energy efficient retrofit interventions and will facilitate further research in both the public and private sector.
Outputs and Impacts
The main outcomes of the APACHE project are:
- an academic journal paper reviewing the existing evidence on the fabric air leakage distribution across the UK housing stock,
- an academic journal paper exploring the implications of existing evidence on the air leakage of UK dwellings for policy and building regulations,
- a database of air leakage measurements of UK homes collated from existing studies,
- a one-day workshop that brought together the building construction industry and policy stakeholders to discuss the outcome of the study and its implications for policy, research and industry practices,
- a video of the workshop presentations and discussion (soon to be made available via Bartlett TV).
The indirect outcomes were:
- to establish interdisciplinary collaboration between two departments within UCL (IEDE and UCL Energy Institute), and
- to bring together different experts and establish collaboration through the workshop with experts and stakeholders from different areas (academics, government representatives, consultancy companies).
More on the project can be found here.