Quinn Radiators have been installed to upgrade a Victorian house, reducing CO2 emissions by 80% against a 1990 baseline figure, as part of a social housing retrofit project by Eco-Energy (NI).
The project is designed to highlight how retrofit is an ideal solution to making the UK's older housing stock more energy efficient and is part of the UK Technology Strategy Board's (TSB) retrofit for the future competition. It aims to create a database of exemplar retrofit properties with evidence of in-use performance and costs to kick start the social housing retrofit market.
Eco-Energy (NI) Ltd was the only successful entrant from Northern Ireland to secure funding, along with 87 other UK retrofit projects.
Grove Housing Association provided Eco-Energy with a three storey, three-bedroomed Victorian mid-terrace house, built in 1896 - similar to around 8.5 million solid wall homes across the UK. Seven Quinn Round Top low capacity radiators were installed by Northern Ireland installers O Miskelly, providing more heat at a faster rate, using less water and less energy than other traditional radiators.
Peter Keig from Eco Energy, said: 'We were set a brief to design and build a replicable, cost effective whole-house retrofit solution to improve the energy performance and reduce CO2 emissions of an existing dwelling within the social housing sector.'
'As well as developing a house that offers the latest in energy efficient technology, we also had to focus on making the solutions affordable and as user-friendly as possible, so getting the ventilation and heating system right has been essential. A wet system was installed consisting of a Baxi 12 kW system boiler and Gas Saver flue gas heat recovery, coupled to low capacity Quinn radiators via insulated pipes,' he added.
Quinn Radiators has invested £130 million in a fully automated manufacturing facility in Newport. The investment in automation has enabled the company to reduce the environmental impact of its manufacturing process and lower the carbon footprint of its products with reduced waste and energy use.
