Six post-war council properties have reached completion of a full-house retrofit, as part of the Technology Strategy Board’s ‘Retrofit for the Future’ campaign.

The project, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, marks the largest number of properties completed in any one of the TSB’s projects under the £17m retrofit drive in the UK.

The six properties represent the typical housing stock of the town, and were already fitted with the reasonable current standard of double glazing and loft insulation.

A total of £150,000 was spent on the Rotherham project to carry out a number of solutions for improving their energy efficiency.

The work included floor insulation, the replacement of windows and doors with triple glazing and high performance external doors, 200mm external wood fibre insulation with polymer render finish, loft insulation (wool and recycled newspaper), the incorporation of either natural ventilation, a Passivent system, photovoltaic panels, zoned heating controls and the adoption of low-energy lighting.

Bramall Construction, part of the Keepmoat Group, led the project along with architects Urbed. Bramall said the choice of six properties was to demonstrate a viable and cost-effective approach of retrofitting an organisation’s existing housing stock.

"We have used different combinations of solutions across the six properties so that we are able to compare the effectiveness. We also took care to ensure solutions that would work in conjunction with previous Decent Homes works, as it would not be cost-effective for our clients to have to replace this," said Dave Booth, Bramall Construction commercial director.

The team have predicted the technology and building methods used in the project will reduce emissions by 80% across the six properties.

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