Quantifying the aggregate thermal performance of UK holiday homes

Abstract

In the UK, there are approximately 330,000 holiday homes spread across a large number of mainly privately owned sites. These homes are often sited in exposed locations, are poorly insulated and are generally heated using expensive fuels, such as electricity or LPG. There is also a lack of empirical evidence available on the in situ energy performance of these homes. Consequently, it is not possible, given the existing evidence base, to determine whether these homes suffer from the same scale of building fabric thermal ‘performance gaps’ (between assumed and realised in situ performance) that have been documented for newbuild UK housing. This paper presents the results obtained from undertaking detailed in situ thermal fabric tests on five new holiday homes. Whilst the size reported here is small, the results indicate that a ‘performance gap’ exists for all of these homes. Results obtained indicate that this gap appears narrower than that documented for newbuild UK housing. The results also suggest that the scale of the ‘gap’ may be more a consequence of the way in which the design intent of these homes has been determined, i.e. a ‘prediction gap’.

Practical application: This paper presents the results obtained from undertaking detailed building fabric thermal performance tests on a small sample of new holiday homes. The results of these tests indicate that although a building fabric thermal performance ‘performance gap’ exists in all of the holiday homes tested, the results suggest that the ‘gap’ is much smaller than that documented for new build UK housing and may be more of a consequence of the way in which the design intent of these homes has been determined, i.e. a ‘prediction gap’, rather than a ‘performance gap’ between assumed and realised in situ performance. These results could be used by industry to develop more appropriate prediction tools that are relevant to holiday homes.