The first part of a six month programme of monitoring, funded by the TSB (Technology Strategy Board), has now been completed at our Larch House in Ebbw Vale. In collaboration with the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University we have been carrying out co-heating tests on the Larch house over the past 4 weeks. During the tests the house has been heated up to 25 degrees by electrical heaters. The electrical energy required to maintain a constant temperature has been monitored in order to calculate the as built thermographic properties of the house. I visited site on Monday as they moved the monitoring equipment from the Larch to the Lime House, which will have the same tests completed on it over the next three weeks.
The Cardiff University team have also carried out Tracer Gas tests. These tests monitor the dispersal of a gas released into the house (Carbon Dioxide in this instance) due to normal air leakage through the construction. We do not have any results yet from the tests at the Larch House, but during the testing the Cardiff team thought their equipment might have failed. In fact, the excellent draft free construction was hardly letting any gas through – the team had never seen anything like it before.
We will be posting updates of the results of the monitoring as soon as we have received them from the Welsh School of Architecture.
