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Approved Document Part F of the building regulations is a well-established standard for the requirement of ventilation and how to measure its effectiveness, also improvements made in building air tightness and the standards of insulation have resulted in a more energy efficient home. Consequently, the risk of overheating in buildings with poorly designed ventilation, target air tightness and insulative properties has increased. Noise can affect what ventilation methods are used to maintain both suitable air quality and comfortable temperature, which can lead to either misuse of ventilation or dealing with greater noise levels. Homes can be passively ventilated, simply by opening a window to equalise indoor and outdoor temperatures, or, mechanically ventilated, such as with MVHR systems or decentralised extract systems. During periods of hot weather, it maybe undesirable to open a window for an occupant living in a busy city area for instance, allowing external noise into their dwelli...

The new Building Regulations Part LA 2021 – Future Homes Standard has provided huge insight into the future of domestic new builds. One of the major changes implemented will be accounting for the electricity generated by fuel source in UK and understanding how this will look in the future. Renewable technologies are being adopted at a huge rate and Figure 1 illustrates how this will accelerate over the next decade. In 2018 the carbon intensity generated by the UK reduced by approximately 60% since 2008 so a low carbon future is looking ever more viable. This notion is being reflected into the new regulations and electricity will now be less carbon intensive than mains gas. With electricity now being better than gas can I install electric panel heaters as my main heating source? No, unfortunately you cannot install electric panel heaters/electric storage heaters as your main heating source, and this is due to SAP 10 introducing a new metric for compliance: Primary Energy Target - The T...

 The dwelling emission rate is the annual CO2 emissions from all new dwellings and is expressed in kilograms per square meter of floor area (kg/m²). The quantity is calculated in accordance with the applicable regulatory document and expressed in kilograms per unit floor area to two decimal places, is known as the Dwelling Emissions Rate , or DER. In another sense, the DER is equal to the annual CO2 emission per unit of floor area for, space heating, water heating, ventilation, and lighting less the emission that could be saved from renewable technology. The dwelling emissions rate is used within SAP ‘ Standards Assessment Procedure ’ and will be conducted by an SAP assessor or on construction domestic energy assessor. Just so it is clear the SAP assessor and the on construction energy assessors are the same people but they can be called two different things. The SAP will also produce a target emissions rate ‘TER’ which is also expressed kilograms per square meter of floor area (kg...

The assessment of overheating risk in new dwellings within SAP has often been criticised as not detailed enough, particularly for high risk scenarios Although the assessment of overheating risk currently sits in AD L1A, it was not part of the Future Homes Standard consultation issued last year. Overheating buildings is a particular area of concern for the Government and this consultation proposes the following changes; Introduce a new regulatory requirement for overheating mitigation, alongside new statutory guidance, with the aim of reducing overheating risk in new-build residential buildings. Remove the requirement to check overheating risk from SAP and Part L1A and create a new Approved Document which contains the requirements for developers to ensure residential buildings do not overheat. Proposes two alternative approaches to demonstrating compliance with the new requirements; A simplified method based on prescriptive measures which have different requirements based on location (...