Housing Providers
Support for Housing Providers
For housing providers, we provide a comprehensive range of external wall insulation and render systems, backed by the best technical support in the business. At every stage – from design and planning to on-site support and post-installation aftercare – we help clients to make the most of their budgets.
Whatever the project – new-build or retrofit – our early involvement on residential schemes helps to deliver greater impact, demonstrable energy savings, and improved conditions for residents.
Decarbonisation Retrofit Projects
Social housing providers are one of our largest and most important client groups. Accordingly, we have many years of experience of helping social landlords to plan and deliver large-scale decarbonisation schemes. In line with PAS standards and industry best practice, we help to design retrofit schemes that adopt a fabric-first approach.
Every year, we support improvements to thousands of social and private homes, often through publicly funded schemes such as ECO, LAD, Warm Homes: Local Grant and Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund.
Our early design input has helped clients to make important savings on time and costs, to secure additional funding, and to make their budgets extend considerably further.
Key Benefits of Retrofitting Permarock EWI Systems
- Significant thermal performance improvements
- Valuable energy savings for residents
- Improved living standards for residents
- Greater comfort and less risk of mould / damp
- Less disruption than with interior insulation systems
- Aesthetic improvements to homes and wider communities
- Encourages more pride in local neighbourhoods
Decarbonisation Schemes and the PAS Standards
We have extensive experience of supporting large-scale, publicly-funded retrofit projects delivered in accordance with the latest PAS standards.
Our systems have been installed by accredited installers on social housing decarbonisation schemes across Britain. They are suitable for use on publicly-funded schemes such as:
- Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund (WH:SHF)
- Optimised RetroFit Programme (Wales)
- ECO
They are certificated through the KIWA Agrément BDA certificates to ensure compliance with UK Building Regulations. This includes use on high-rise buildings. They meet the requirements of PAS 2030/ PAS 2035 for use under energy efficiency initiatives supported by utility companies and UK Government.
To support clients in meeting the latest PAS standards, we will:
- Work closely with Retrofit Designers and Retrofit Installers.
- Use property-by-property survey data to provide a full set of specifications, details and calculations.
- Produce site-specific supporting data for wind loadings, fixings requirements and condensation analysis etc.
- Work with the Retrofit Designer to ensure all cold bridging risks are addressed.
- Produce designs to suit all expected exposure conditions.
New-Build Housing
We regularly help local authorities, housing associations and architects to develop designs for low- and zero-carbon housing projects. This includes designing to the Passivhaus standard.
Passivhaus buildings typically achieve a 75% reduction in space heating requirements compared to standard practice for a UK new build. Passivhaus buildings readily achieve Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4 without the need to incorporate micro-generation systems.
One of the key Passivhaus design principles is a focus on reducing space heating and cooling requirements by installing effective insulation and by maximising airtightness. The Passivhaus Standard requires:
- A maximum space heating and cooling demand of less than 15 kWh/m² year or a maximum heating and cooling load of 10W/m²
- A maximum total primary energy demand of 120 kWh/m²/year
- An air change rate of no more than 0.6 air changes per hour @ 50 Pa
Installing a suitably designed Permarock External Wall Insulation system can produce:
- Very high levels of insulation
- Greatly improved airtightness
- Greatly reduced incidence of thermal bridging and associated problems (e.g. condensation, damp and mould-growth).
Permarock systems have been specified for numerous projects that have achieved full Passivhaus certification, including the 2019 Stirling Prize-winning project, Goldsmith Street, Norwich.
For more details, please see our Designing Low-Carbon Buildings section.
PAS-Compliant Schemes – Examples
For examples of publicly-funded, PAS-compliant schemes on which Permarock systems have been used, please see our Project Case Studies section.
