UK researchers have led the development of two new European Standards on measuring heat loss from houses.
The standards have been published and adopted in 34 countries following work led by Leeds Beckett University’s Professor David Johnston and University of Salford’s Professor Richard Fitton, in collaboration with experts around Europe.
The standards address new and existing homes as-built rather than in a lab testing environment.
They’re based on a testing method – the “Coheating Test” – developed by Professor Johnston and colleagues at Leeds Beckett University to assess the aggregate, insitu thermal performance of housing.
The university said they “will make sure that the thermal performance of housing can be measured and understood in the same way”.
‘Pressures of real life’
“It enables the performance of the building fabric to be tested under the pressures of real life, revealing any gaps between what designers intended and what was actually built,” said Johnston, Professor of Building Performance Evaluation at the university’s Leeds Sustainability Institute.
“These standards are the result of a decade’s work,” he added.
“It’s a long process but the impact will be incredibly important as governments and housebuilders rise to the challenge of the climate emergency and net-zero targets.”
The Leeds Sustainability Institute is a multidisciplinary team that combines an understanding of building science, the way people behave, field work and analysing big data.
The two standards are:
• EN 17887 1:2024 Thermal performance of buildings – In situ testing of completed buildings – Part 1: Data collection for aggregate heat loss test
• EN 17887 2:2024 Thermal performance of buildings – In situ testing of completed buildings – Part 2: Steady-state data analysis for aggregate heat loss test
They will be implemented in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK.
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