On Thursday the 3^rd of June BSRIA conducted draught tests on the existing buildings of both bere:architects’ Retrofit For The Future projects. I went along to explain to the tenants what was being done and so that I could also pick up on discussions that the practice directors had before I became involved in the project. One of the recurrent themes was that the tenants felt cold indoors in the winter months. For example the Passfield Drive tenants reported that the ground floor was always cold in the winter and looked forward to the improvements that the retrofits would make.

We will be conducting further investigations into the occupants’ experience of their homes in the coming months in order to capture the experience of living in the unconverted building during the winter. The results from these investigations will then be compared to those of post refurbishment user experience and feedback.

The air test of the existing building was six changes an hour: not bad for an old property. However this is 40 times more air leakage than is planned from the converted building. As well as the anticipated leaks around windows and doors there were a couple of minor additional leaks:

a) Around an existing window that would not close properly in the bedroom

b) Existing plastic trickle vents not sealing

c) Existing boxes covering room air vents

Recently in the Larch House, our new build Passivhaus in Wales, an air change of 0.19/h-1 was achieved – the best in the U.K for a free standing domestic building. It is hoped that the Passfield Drive project will reach a similar level of draught free construction, enabling the house to achieve Enerphit certification (more on Enerphit certification later).

BSRIA had planned to take thermal imaging pictures of the property but because they had overrun with their schedule and it was now the summer the hot weather prevented this. This is because the thermal imaging camera needs high contrasts in heat levels to get a conclusive picture. The thermal imaging was postponed to a later date. We also hope to get our own thermal imaging camera soon and will carry out a further study in colder weather conditions.

An unsuccessful attempt to take thermal images of 3 Passfield Drive

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