Heating and Ventilation

With autumn now our doorsteps, Tom Bowland looks back at a scorching hot summer in the UK and what this means when it comes to overheating and building design.

I’d like to say that as I write this blog in the fading heat of what was a really hot summer, I am sitting in the comfortably air conditioned Mitsubishi Electric offices in Manchester. Unfortunately, I’m working at home, with no cooling other than an open window and plenty of ice cubes in my drink.

Here in the UK, our buildings have primarily been designed on the principle that this is a cold country, leaving them ill-designed to cope with heatwaves. Years of legislation aimed at reducing energy use (with the best intentions) have resulted in air-tight buildings that effectively lock in the heat when temperatures rise.

by Scott Ditchfield, Head of Sales Network - Residential Product Group, Mitsubishi Electric

Decarbonising the built environment is one of the biggest focuses in the UK today, in order to reach the ambitious goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Heating and hot water are big emitters of carbon, so changing the way we heat homes is vital to achieving this – and housing associations embracing low-carbon heating play an important part.
 
For social housing, keeping tenants warm and comfortable while ensuring energy costs stay low is critical. As we head into the colder months, it’s important that housing associations are supported to be able to move towards technology like heat pumps, which can provide heat and warm water to multiple homes or apartments, while being efficient enough to keep both energy use and costs to a minimum. 

Electric heating is continually becoming an increasingly viable option for heating properties in the UK. New Government legislation heralds a change in how SAP determines a properties ERP Rating – to almost the same as gas. This change allows widespread use of electric radiators and electric boilers, which are widely understood as having low installation costs, no flue requirement, low maintenance, rapid heat up times and high efficiency. This modern method of heating is shaping up to be a popular choice for the future of home heating within the UK.

Electric Heating Systems are 100% efficient at the point of use. If you pay for 1kW of electricity, you will benefit from 1kW of heat. This is much higher than alternatives which can lose heat through flues etc. When paired with solar PV panels, efficiency of electric heating systems improves, and the carbon dioxide produced reduces.

The HVR awards have been championing innovation, excellence and achievement across the heating and ventilating industry for over a decade. The awards were held at Chelsea Harbour hotel on 29th September 2022, where over 200 heating and ventilation elite celebrated the very best of what the industry offers.

Titon entered the original Titon FireSafe® Air Brick following a successful product launch, and are proud to have won ‘Ancillary Product of the Year’. This is a fantastic achievement highlighting the hard work Titon’s teams have put into developing and manufacturing an innovative product range to the industry.

With the number of UK heat networks set to grow and the continuing government investment, Altecnic have provided a cohesive guide that advises how best to optimise efficiency, and create reliable, sustainable heating systems.

The Altecnic Heat Network Design Guide aims to ensure specifiers, consultants, and contractors achieve the designed system performance post build, with a look at how maximum energy savings from HIUs can only be achieved if the system is designed, installed, and commissioned correctly.

Managing the housing stock of a tenant population comes with its own unique set of challenges. In relation to heating and hot water, many of these challenges arise because of a lack of visibility into what is happening within the full heating ecosystem. Constant visits and calls to every household to assess the situation isn’t practical or cost effective, paving the way for connected appliances and remote monitoring.

by Helen Näslund, Technical Specification Manager, Evinox Energy Ltd

We are all bracing ourselves for this upcoming winter and are all expecting to feel the pinch of the cost of living crisis. Food prices, interest rates and not least energy costs are soaring. On the news there has been talk of potential energy black outs this winter and there have been articles in papers where councils are saying they might need to turn their communal heating systems off for up to five hours a day to keep costs down, leaving their residents in the cold.

Over the last few months several measures have been put in place to try lessen the blow for the British public, for example the energy price cap not covering communal heating system, what is and can actually be done in
this area?