Abstract
The UK government made significant commitments to upgrading the energy efficiency of seven million British homes by 2020, aiming at reducing carbon emissions and addressing fuel poverty. One alternative to achieve better energy performance in existing houses is retrofit. However, there are difficulties associated with retrofitting social housing. It is currently challenging to compare scenarios (retrofit options) considering costs, potential energy efficiency gains, and at the same time minimising disruption to users. This paper presents a Building Information Modelling (BIM) protocol aimed to support decision making by social housing owners. It adopts BIM to simulate alternative retrofit options, considering: (a) potential reductions in energy consumption, (b) 4D BIM for retrofit planning and reduction of users’ disruption and (c) simulation of costs. A what-if scenario matrix is proposed to support decision making in the selection of social housing retrofit solutions, according to client and users’ needs. A case study of the retrofit of a mid-terrace house is presented to demonstrate the workflow. The main output of the work is the BIM protocol, which can support client decision making in diverse social housing retrofit projects, considering all three elements (energy simulation, planning for reduced disruption and cost estimation) in an integrated fashion. Such an integrated approach enables clients to make better informed decisions considering diverse social housing retrofit options through a simple process using readily available BIM technology.
Highlights
Fuel poverty occurs when a household needs to spend more than ten per cent of its income on heating, hot water, lighting and cooking
This paper describes the Building Information Modelling (BIM) protocol and discusses its development
The practical nature of this research is in the use of BIM for housing retrofit; The artefact produced is a BIM protocol, which presents a method for the use of existing BIM-based tools in social housing retrofit projects
Summary
Fuel poverty occurs when a household needs to spend more than ten per cent of its income on heating, hot water, lighting and cooking. Li and Yao [1] point that heating is a direct energy cost of a building, and its impact should be properly considered during the design of social housing. Because of the considerable percentages of fuel poverty, a large number of UK homes require sustainable retrofit to improve their energy efficiency. Retrofitting the existing housing stock is a key factor to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions, and as such it has been supported by several government schemes, e.g., the Energy Company Obligation [3] and Green Deal [4]
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