Category: Retrofitting Traditional Buildings

Victorian House Energy Efficient Refurbishment

This Victorian semi-detached house – part of the SuperHome network – was given an award-winning eco-renovation based on installing cost effective interventions rather than setting out to meet a notional standard. This approach has delivered a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions.

This Victorian house built in 1875, is in Peckham, south east London is three-story house with a pitched roof, a bay-fronted ground floor window and a two-storey rear extension, which was added to in the early 1990s to take it up to three stories using aerated concrete block walls. It is semi-detached on two stories. The main entrance is on the detached side, located down a narrow alley.

Before its refurbishment, the house had very few energy efficiency measures installed. The pitched roof had minimal insulation while the flat roof over the rear extension had only 50mm thick foam board insulation installed between joists. The suspended timber ground floor was uninsulated while the floor of the rear projection was a 20mm thick screed laid on bare soil. The ground floor bay window was fitted with single glazed sash windows; all the other windows were old double glazed PVC units, which leaked around the frames. The house was heated by a mixture of electric storage heaters and gas fires, while hot water was from an ancient gas boiler.

Full details on the building4change website