Heat Loss in UK Homes - World Beating?

[Deleted User]

Not surprising given that a lot of our housing stock is of a bygone era:

https://phpionline.co.uk/news/the-alarming-truth-about-heat-loss-from-uk-homes/

‘A new study by tado° has found that UK homes lose heat significantly faster than European neighbours, even when factoring in outside temperature.

The study, conducted between December 2019 and January 2020 in 80,000 homes, found that a UK home with an indoor temperature of 20°C and an outside temperature of 0°C loses on average 3°C after five hours. Compared with some Western European neighbours such as Germany, UK homes are losing heat up to three times as fast. This in turn results in British heating systems having to work harder to maintain the temperature.’

Mstty

Ready to be shot down but I suspect there hasn't been a well built estate house in the past 50 years. Profit over quality and the NHBC might as well no exist for building standards. Just a cheap insurance for if anyone sots something in 10 years and a rubber stamp.

FreeBear

BBC had a similar news bite the other day - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-60289396

I quoted the map in this thread - https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6409596/how-fast-does-your-house-cool-down

Judging by some of the responses, there are a lot of very badly performing homes in this country. Although mine isn't too bad in comparison, I still have a long way to go to match our Scandinavian friends.

Aylesbury_Duck

Maybe that Insulate Britain lot had a point, you know.  Stopping mums on the school run in their 4x4s may have been inconvenient, but so are massive energy bills.

[Deleted User]

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Maybe that Insulate Britain lot had a point, you know.  Stopping mums on the school run in their 4x4s may have been inconvenient, but so are massive energy bills.

They had plenty of good points, but went about things in the way least likely to gain any support and have any effect.  Just like the Stop Oil lot at the moment (or whatever they call themselves).

peter3hg

Mstty said:

Ready to be shot down but I suspect there hasn't been a well built estate house in the past 50 years. Profit over quality and the NHBC might as well no exist for building standards. Just a cheap insurance for if anyone sots something in 10 years and a rubber stamp.

A modern new build will be much more energy efficient than a 50 year old house.
Age is the biggest factor when determining how energy efficient a home is:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/ageofthepropertyisthebiggestsinglefactorinenergyefficiencyofhomes/2021-11-01

In England and Wales only 15% of houses are post 2000 and less than 8% built since 2010.
(https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/council-tax-stock-of-properties-2021)


It isn't modern houses we should be looking at, but the older housing stock.
The questions are:
Do we have a higher percentage of old properties than most countries?
Does the style of construction of our old properties make them hard to insulate?
Or more likely have we just failed to invest in brining our old housing stock up to standard?

BUFF

peter3hg said:

It isn't modern houses we should be looking at, but the older housing stock.
The questions are:
Do we have a higher percentage of old properties than most countries?
Does the style of construction of our old properties make them hard to insulate?
Or more likely have we just failed to invest in brining our old housing stock up to standard?

Given WW2 was fought over much of Central Europe but UK wasn't invaded & fought over I would suggest, yes, yes & yes (this can also be complicated by listing & conservation areas).
I was genuinely surprised to see how little better Belgian, French & Dutch housing rated than the UK.

Krakkkers

I was going to make the point that we flattened Europe in the 40's and it had to be rebuilt but held back until someone else mentioned it.

peter3hg

BUFF said:

peter3hg said:

It isn't modern houses we should be looking at, but the older housing stock.
The questions are:
Do we have a higher percentage of old properties than most countries?
Does the style of construction of our old properties make them hard to insulate?
Or more likely have we just failed to invest in brining our old housing stock up to standard?

Given WW2 was fought over much of Central Europe but UK wasn't invaded & fought over I would suggest, yes, yes & yes (this can also be complicated by listing & conservation areas).
I was genuinely surprised to see how little better Belgian, French & Dutch housing rated than the UK.

That certainly seems to be the case.

Belgium is the closest to UK in terms of age profile of housing stock and also has the second worse performance on heat loss.
Where we should be looking is Denmark as they have a fairly similar age profile of houses but much better performance.




From https://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/Briefing papers/92993_BRE_Poor-Housing_in_-Europe.pdf


Edit: Another interesting thing to note is the percentage of flats compared to houses. According to that report 19% of dwellings in the UK are flats, 61% in Germany are and 41% in France are flats. Generally a flat is going to have better heat loss characteristics.

The UK is also more likely to have owner-occupiers than most European countries and it is easier to compel landlords to improve their properties.

chris_n

Germany has a lot of houses that are similar to here in Austria. They are multi family houses that often contain 3 or 4 apartments, these would be classed as flats in that number I would have thought.

chris1973

Well, if we have the highest number of poorly insulated homes in the World, pretty pointless still flogging the vast majority of us forms of heating which rely on high levels of modern insulation then, like ASHP.

Can't have it both ways.