low-carbon housing

Literature on the in-situ performance evaluation of Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) in low-carbon social housing suggests that they can maintain a healthy ventilation rate in bedrooms in the UK. However, issues with noise and draught have been reported frequently. These issues may affect the sleep quality of occupants and have a detrimental effect on health and wellbeing. This research aims to present a quantification of these issues by carrying out detailed monitoring and evaluation at two case study sites in Wales, UK.

Buildings and communities need to be more resilient in the face of increasing weather extremes due to climate change. Current building models lack adequate definition to address this new challenge. This paper defines resilient design in terms of four ecosystemic factors: robustness, redundancy, feedback and co-evolutionary adaptivity. It builds upon previous work on usability and extends this to include resilient performance in relation to three new UK case studies covering retrofit and new build housing. In each case usability studies are evaluated in terms of resilient design.