IHBC ‘Intervention’ Signpost: ‘Retrofit Revisit’ (2024) building performance evaluation project from CIBSE

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The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) document ‘Retrofit Revisit’ is a building performance evaluation project to inform the UK’s approach to improving our housing stock and contribute to our net zero objectives.

CIBSE writes:

…This publication details a building performance evaluation of 10 retrofitted homes, carried out approximately 10 years after the original retrofit works. It aimed to gather lessons on retrofit and on BPE techniques…

Retrofit Revisit is an important building performance evaluation project to inform the UK’s approach to improving our housing stock and contribute to our net zero objectives. This publication details a building performance evaluation of 10 retrofitted homes, carried out approximately 10 years after the original retrofit works. It aimed to gather lessons on retrofit and on BPE techniques.

On retrofit:

  • What has stood the test of time?
  • Are there any new lessons on how to carry out retrofit projects?
  • Topics of particular interest included (but were not limited to): energy demand, moisture, insulation options (moisture and combustibility), degradation of original solutions (e.g. airtightness).

On BPE techniques:

  • What can be learned in a relatively short and non-intrusive manner, from individual BPE techniques or packages of several techniques?
  • Where are more specific or detailed BPE techniques useful? How can some BPE techniques being, or newly, developed help?

The sample of 10 homes was as follows:

  • Six were part of the 2009 Retrofit for the Future programme. All were considered best practice or exemplar at the time, and employed a whole house ‘deep’ retrofit approach.
  • Six were pre-1919 properties.
  • Nine were houses, one a flat.
  • Some were tenanted from housing associations, others occupied by private owners.
  • The insulation strategies and properties varied, with a mix of external, internal, and cavity insulation and of permeable and impermeable materials.
  • Heating, hot water and ventilation systems were very varied across the sample.

A two-tiered BPE approach was followed, which is detailed fully within the publication.

Read more and download the publication

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