Vent-Axia has welcomed Beama’s new indoor air quality guidance for the UK’s Green Deal programme. The document, Avoiding Indoor Air Quality Problems Associated with Fabric Improvements, explains the health risks associated with poorly ventilated buildings and challenges Green Deal Providers to specify continuous ventilation with insulation packages to ensure good indoor air quality.
According to Beama’s guidance, one in five UK homes* are affected by condensation and mould growth with many factors contributing to this such as poor thermal performance of the building fabric, inadequate heating, lifestyles of occupants and inadequate ventilation. Although the Green Deal offers an opportunity to address these issues Beama states it can as equally exacerbate them without understanding and minimising the risks.
To avoid the degradation of building fabric and health issues caused by inadequate ventilation, Beama’s guidance advises that the overall objective when refurbishing buildings is to create an ideal balance between heating, insulation and ventilation. Beama adds the recommended approach to achieve a balanced refurbishment involving internal or external insulation improvements is to specify continuous ventilation.
“Continuous ventilation is a simple solution to air quality problems. We have met a number of Green Deal providers to make clear to them that by not addressing ventilation adequately when renovating homes they are putting the building and the occupants at risk”, explains Kelly Butler, marketing director at Beama.
If ventilation is not considered when improving the air tightness of a dwelling as part of an energy efficiency package Green Deal Providers and installers may face reputational risks and remedial costs.
“Obviously we see reputational risk here for providers of Green Deal measures and given that a simple continuous fan consumes less than £5 of energy per annum, this is a small price to pay for healthy living. We are delighted that DECC has highlighted the importance of ventilation in their own guidance for Green Deal and our document further outlines the risks and solutions available,” Kelly Butler added.
“At Vent-Axia we welcome the introduction of Beama’s Green Deal indoor air quality guidance. The Green Deal offers fantastic opportunities for households to update and improve the efficiency of their homes while reducing UK carbon emissions, but this cannot be at the expense of good indoor air quality. Ventilation needs to be considered when insulating homes and continuous ventilation offers a simple, effective solution to improving the indoor air quality and comfort of these homes.” says Lee Nurse, marketing director at Vent-Axia.
Designed to work with the natural air infiltration, continuous ventilation systems control the air path through the home. As a result, they prevent the migration of damaging humidity and pollutants, providing near silent energy efficient ventilation, and they are ideal for retrofitting.
Beama’s guidance document ‘Avoiding Indoor Air Quality Problems Associated with Fabric Improvements’ is available free to download at www.beama.org.uk.
For details of the Department of Energy And Climate Change document – Green Deal Code of Practice visit http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/tackling-climate-change/green-deal/6533-green-deal-code-of-practice.pdf