English Heritage research carried out on Shrewsbury homes

Representatives from English Heritage Building Conservation department visited Shrewsbury 3 times during February and March in order to carry out some monitoring on Victorian Housing within the town. They were on the hunt for case study buildings as part of an on-going project and it was suggested that they use some of the case study buildings that MEA are already studying as part of the SECHURBA project (which investigates ways of making historic buildings more sustainable).

 

The English Heritage research is to measure heat flow through typical historic buildings, and in particular through solid brick walls. It will help to understand and predict the behaviour of individual construction types and the thermal performance of buildings as a whole.

3 houses in Albert Street, Shrewsbury were chosen to test a new method developed by Glasgow Caledonian University to measure U-values using heat flux, air and wall surface temperatures. Each house had 3 small sensors attached to either side of the exterior walls for 2 weeks and an infrared thermograph of the exterior was also taken.

 

Once the results have been evaluated they will be included into on-going research being carried out by MEA through the SECHURBA project. Project coordinator Nicole Solomons said: "We are very pleased to have the expertise of English Heritage involved with the SECHURBA project. Our reports and recommendations will be distributed to the homeowners concerned and a workshop will be organised during June to publicise our findings to other homeowners within the area. We hope this will help to highlight the interventions that can be made to improve the energy efficiency of older homes, even when they are situated within a Conservation Area".

Full details of the workshops will be publicised on the MEA website soon