Evaluation of flue gas heat recovery, insulation of hard-to-treat cavity walls and heating controls (CP749)

New Charter Group is a social landlord with 19,500 homes in Manchester, Nottingham and Oldham. New Charter worked with contractor Warm Front Limited to install measures in 53 properties in the Tameside area of North West England, which were a mixture of social housing and private tenure domestic properties. The properties selected for improvements in this project were previously uninsulated and/or had old non-condensing boilers without FHGR.

Seventeen properties received new boilers and heating controls, 17 received hard to treat cavity insulation and 19 received this combination of measures.

Of these, NEA monitored 16 properties, five with new boilers and heating controls, six with insulation, and five with the combination of measures. A control group of 6 properties was also adopted, where no measures were installed. This was used as a comparator, as energy data from before the installations took place was sparse.

Forty percent (40%)  of the residents in the monitored group had health conditions, all of which were worsened by the cold.