Social housing targeted for launch of Ventilation MOT®

Housing associations and local authorities responsible for management of housing stock, along with their specialist advisors, are to be offered advance access to the UK’s first Ventilation MOT® which has been specifically designed to establish the adequacy, or otherwise, of the ventilation measures installed in an existing home.
 
David Bly, Director of Cornerstone Professional Services (UK) Ltd, the organisation behind the Ventilation MOT®, explains why social housing providers and their advisors are being offered first adopter status, “Inadequate ventilation, or, as it’s referred to in the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act, “not enough ventilation”, can be a major contributor to condensation and mould growth in a home. If a property is a recently built one, then there’s a chance that one of the recognised ventilation systems in Approved Document F has been installed and it can be demonstrated that there is “adequate means of ventilation provided for people in the building”. It’s a completely different situation in older properties which make up the vast majority of the housing stock and that’s where the Ventilation MOT® will prove very useful to social housing landlords. As a key process in the Property MOT® platform, it will let them know where they stand in terms of ventilation adequacy and what, if anything, they need to do to get there”

Older properties can have all different types of ventilation measures installed at different times during the life of a dwelling. Mixing of different components or different methods of ventilation is very common e.g. intermittent extract fans in some “wet rooms” and continuous running dMEV type extract fans in others. Until the launch of the Ventilation MOT® it has been very difficult to provide an accurate, fast and methodical analysis of the how the different ventilation measures installed in a dwelling combine or can be combined to demonstrate adequate or enough ventilation in a home against different recognized ventilation methods. In the past it has been very much left to the knowledge and experience of a “surveyor” or “specialist” to establish whether an existing home is adequately ventilated or not using their individual knowledge, opinion, skills and experience. There has been no recognized and used standardized approach which results in a great deal of subjectivity and ambiguity on the matter. The Ventilation MOT® has been developed to change this current situation allowing trained and certified Ventilation MOT® surveyors to input data on existing ventilation measures installed in a home into a purpose-built survey spp which, using a combination of thousands of algorithms, gives a rating of the existing ventilation measures benchmarked against each of the following recognised methods of ventilation:

• (System A) Background Ventilators and Intermittent Extract Fans and/or continuously running Single Room Heat Recovery Ventilation units in “Wet Rooms”.
• (System B) Continuous Mechanical Extract Ventilation via De-centralised dMEV Fans and/or a Centralised MEV Fan in “Wet Rooms”, with/without continuously running Single Room Heat Recovery Ventilation units in “Habitable Rooms”.
• (System C) Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR).
• (System D) Positive Input Ventilation (PIV).

Cornerstone commissioned Homevent (a division of Elta Fans) to lead the creation of the Ventilation MOT®. John Bradley, Managing Director of Homevent, led the Ventilation MOT® development process. David explained why they chose Homevent as their lead consultants on the project, “We wanted an organisation with the staff with the technical knowledge and experience of ventilation in existing homes we knew we could trust to deliver a methodology that was technically robust, easy to use, and impartial with it being easily enhanced and developed as necessary in the future. We knew John, and his colleague Paul Harrington, already as they are both well known in the residential ventilation industry. When John presented us with his initial ideas on what they could produce for us we knew we had found the right people. We’re delighted that they over- delivered on what they said they would do and have produced an outstandingly good piece of work for us which we’re sure will excite our social housing customer base as much as we are.”

John Bradley was equally enthusiastic about the Ventilation MOT®, “As soon as I heard David’s, and his fellow director Andrew Dallen’s, first thoughts on the Ventilation MOT® I knew instinctively that they were onto something really good and that we wanted to be part of it. It’s certainly been the most technically challenging project that I’ve been involved in during the last four decades I’ve worked in the ventilation industry. It’s also been one of the most enjoyable and personally rewarding ones. I think anyone involved in any way in trying to ensure adequate ventilation in existing homes will find the Ventilation MOT® of much interest and of great use. It’s one of those things that comes along every now and again in our industry that you know has a real chance of making a big difference.”

Ventilation MOT® training is offered by the D.A.M.P Alliance, with the initial training dates being released in August 2021.

Any interested social housing landlords or their specialist advisors should contact David Bly direct on Tel: 07738 861311 or email: david.bly@cornerstone-ltd.co.uk
John Bradley can be contacted on Tel: 07894 621243 or email: jbradley@homevent.co.uk

www.cornerstone-ltd.co.uk