Innovative partnership wins national award for real-world insights into homes of the future

A unique partnership which has brought together housebuilders, manufacturers and academics to find solutions for heating low-carbon homes in the future has won a national award.

The Future Homes Project @ Energy House 2.0 has been a three-year landmark collaboration between The University of Salford, housebuilders Bellway and Barratt Redrow, and housebuilding supply chain partner Saint-Gobain.

The project was named as Most Innovative Partnership at the Building Innovation Awards, which were held in Birmingham on Tuesday (29 September). Bellway was also a finalist in the Best Energy Efficiency Innovation and Best Carbon Reduction Innovation or Practice categories.

The common objective of the Future Homes Project @ Energy House 2.0 has been to explore how energy-efficient and liveable homes can best be delivered at scale. The project comes at a time the new house building industry  moves away from gas boilers towards electric heating and hot-water systems as part of new regulations to deliver lower carbon homes.

Prof Lubo Jankovic, of Energy House Labs at The University of Salford, said: “It is very inspiring to work with our industry partners who contribute their products and systems to us for scientific research and take our research findings back into the real world and make a tangible impact on the performance of new houses and wellbeing of their occupants across the UK.”

The project involved the construction and testing of two full-size standard new-build homes – Bellway’s The Future Home and Barratt Redrow and Saint-Gobain’s eHome2 – within the university’s Energy House 2.0 climate chamber. The housebuilders and supply-chain partners created a unique model of collaboration by sharing data openly, jointly funding research and adopting unified approaches.

Key impacts from the project are:

• Air source heat pumps in new-build homes can be four times more efficient than gas boilers at typical UK winter temperatures. The optimal specification for their installation and use has already been incorporated into the construction of homes across the UK.
• ASHPs operating in cooling mode can significantly reduce overheating and provide a potential solution to address the challenge of increasingly frequent heatwaves.
• The whole-building envelope solution trialled at eHome2 has been commercialised into a fully tested/warrantied solution for scalable MMC low-rise housing.
• The project has influenced national and regional policy, from heat pump regulations to the Home Energy Model and air quality guidance.
• Learnings are also supporting other housebuilders as they transition away from gas boilers, in particular SMEs who would not have the resources for this kind of research.

Jamie Bursnell, Group Head of Technical and Innovation at Bellway, said: “This award recognises the real-world impact of this partnership, which shows what’s possible when academia and industry work together.

“The unique testing of the houses built within the university’s pioneering climate chamber is providing a vital roadmap for the housebuilding industry as we move towards net-zero. As well as finding solutions for homes of the future, the research is already influencing the construction of homes being built today.”

Oliver Novakovic, Technical & Innovation Director at Barratt Redrow, said: “This award is fantastic recognition of the scale of collaboration that made Energy House 2.0 possible. Working alongside our partners, we have helped to create a world-leading research facility that is generating invaluable insights into the homes of the future.

“The project is already helping us to better understand how homes perform in real-world weather conditions and supporting our ambition to deliver high-quality, energy-efficient homes. We are proud to have played our part in a project that has now been recognised with this prestigious award.”

Tom Cox, Construction Solutions Director for Saint-Gobain UK, said: “We’re delighted with this recognition. The full build of new homes like eHome2 inside a world-leading climate chamber is, and will continue to, provide huge insight for us and the wider industry. This insight will shape homes of the future – how they’re designed and built, as well as the experiences of families in their homes for years to come.

“It’s helping people to understand how to manage efficient and affordable comfort in winter, and tackle overheating in blazing heat of summer spikes. Throughout it’s been a model of collaboration across supply chains and with academia and a blueprint for delivering real-world, scalable innovation.”

More information about The Future Homes project at Energy House 2.0 can be found at https://energyhouselabs.salford.ac.uk/labs/energy-house-2-0/.

Captions: (Image credit – UKBE and Joe Gardner Photography)

• The unique collaboration between The University of Salford, Bellway, Barratt Redrow and Saint-Gobain won Most Innovative Partnership at the Building Innovation Awards. Pictured are: awards host Rod Woodward, Oliver Novakovic from Barratt Redrow, Tom Cox from Saint-Gobain, Isabel Tilston from Bellway, Prof Lubo Jankovic from The University of Salford, Jamie Bursnell from Bellway, and [INSERT NAME AND ORGANISATION].