Ground breaking research facility at The University of Salford
The Energy House is a world-first research project designed to help create the energy-efficient homes of the future.
Led by The University of Salford, in partnership with Bellway, Saint-Gobain and Barratt Developments, The Energy House 2.0 is researching and testing, in tightly controlled conditions, new ways of powering, heating and insulating homes, making them more energy efficient and helping to meet new standards which require a significant reduction in carbon emissions for new-build homes from 2025.
The Energy House comprises an early 20th century two-bedroom terraced house within an environmental chamber allowing an accurate and rapid assessment of energy efficient retro fit technologies.
It is a traditional construction; solid brick walls, suspended timber floors and single glazed windows with a conventional ‘wet’ heating system fired by a gas boiler. The environmental chamber can be used to simulate a wide variety of weather conditions with a temperature range from -12°C to +30°C. The chamber is also equipped with rigs to simulate wind, rain, snow and incident solar radiation.
Throughout the chamber and the house there are over 200 monitoring points with real time data collection of parameters such as temperature, humidity, heat flux, electricity and gas consumption.
The facility underpins a range of research topics including:
- Building physics/performance
- Sensors/data collection
- Data analysis and visualisation
- Human factors
- Smart meters and connected homes
Find out more on the University of Salford website.
