No‐fines concrete homes: atypical thermal performances

Abstract

Purpose – This paper is a continuation of “No‐fines concrete in the UK social housing stock: 50 years on” published in Issue 4 of Volume 29 of this journal. It identifies the thermal performance of existing, un‐refurbished no‐fines concrete (NFC) walls; as about 33,000 NFC homes exist in Scotland. A majority of these properties are owned by social housing providers (SHPs) and are being upgraded to current building standards. Literature identifies the thermal performance (U‐value) of NFC walls ranging from 1.1 W/m2K to 2.0 W/m2K depending on the build‐up of the structure. The homes are classified as “hard to treat” and, as a result, the occupants experience “fuel poverty”. SHPs currently adopt a range of measures to refurbish NFC properties and adopt a broad brush approach, refurbishing a range of non‐traditional (NT) constructed dwellings under similar refurbishment packages. The purpose of this paper is to call for a re‐think in terms of such refurbishment approaches when seeking to improve the thermal p...