Quantifying the aggregate thermal performance of UK holiday homes

Johnston, D; Farmer, DJ; Miles-Shenton, D

Abstract

In the UK, there are approximately 330,000 holiday homes spread across a large number of mainly privately owned sites. These homes are often sited in exposed locations, are poorly insulated and are generally heated using expensive fuels, such as electricity or LPG. There is also a lack of empirical evidence available on the in situ energy performance of these homes. Consequently, it is not possible, given the existing evidence base, to determine whether these homes suffer from the same scale of building fabric thermal ‘performance gaps’ (between assumed and realised in situ performance) that have been documented for newbuild UK housing. This paper presents the results obtained from undertaking detailed in situ thermal fabric tests on five new holiday homes. Whilst the size reported here is small, the results indicate that a ‘performance gap’ exists for all of these homes. Results obtained indicate that this gap appears narrower than that documented for newbuild UK housing. The results also suggest that the scale of the ‘gap’ may be more a consequence of the way in which the design intent of these homes has been determined, i.e. a ‘prediction gap’.

Citation

Johnston, D., Farmer, D., & Miles-Shenton, D. (2017). Quantifying the aggregate thermal performance of UK holiday homes. Building Services Engineering Research and Technology, 38(2), 209-225. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143624416681614

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Nov 30, 2016
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Feb 24, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 24, 2020
• Journal: Building Services Engineering Research and Technology
• Print ISSN: 0143-6244
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-0849
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Volume: 38
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 209-225
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0143624416681614
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0143624416681614
• Related Public URLs: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/bse