Background

Westville are a specialist insulation and façade contractor, based in Shirebrook in Derbyshire. The company provide energy saving solutions to homeowners and commercial organisations in the Midlands and further afield. Retrofit to existing building stock makes up a large part of their activities, and services include both external and internal wall insulation, cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, rendering, plastering, cladding and steel frame-working.

Westville were founding members of the National Insulation Association and their current Managing Director, Sean Stevenson, sits on the national council. They are also members of the Insulated Cladding and Render Association and the local Trusted Trader scheme.

Find out more about Westville

Opportunity

Westville were interested in developing a tool that could use historical data and publicly accessible databases to map both commercial and residential properties in need of retrofitting with insulation. The tool would help to identify areas with a population who are either suffering from fuel poverty or at a high risk of fuel poverty. It would enable targeting of the retrofit insulation services to help maximise energy savings and the greenhouse gas reduction made for each installation of insulation. This would also result in a cost reduction for the most vulnerable residents.

Solution

The Energy Innovation and Collaboration team arranged for Victor Carneiro Catrib to work with the company in the development of a new tool. Victor’s MSc in Sustainable Building Technology made him the ideal choice to work on the project. His remit was to research and create a database of property construction types across all the wards within the City of Nottingham boundary. This tool would enable Westville to identify, by area or even street, whether a property was of a cavity wall, solid wall or non-tradition construction type that would benefit from one of their insulation solutions. The tool would also be able to identify any conservation areas and the main heating source, all of which would assist in the adoption of low–carbon technologies and the conservation of energy.

Benefits

An Excel based tool with an interactive dashboard has been developed based upon local authority level data. This tool can be populated with data to make it applicable for any local authority area in England and allows for the quick identification of properties, streets and districts suitable for insulation. Westville have already put their new tool to good use, by working with partners to identify potential projects.

Sean Stevenson said, "We have worked with Tim and the team at the University of Nottingham for a number of years and the opportunity to tap into the skills and knowledge of the student base was too good an opportunity to miss. Working with Victor we have added vital, searchable detail to 30 years of local knowledge and helped him gain commercial experience to boost his value in the job market. The output is that we now have a great tool that will help us significantly impact on people’s thermal comfort, help them stay out or get out of fuel poverty and at the same time create large volumes of carbon savings across our area."

Technology

Insulation 

There are many methods of insulating a building and various materials that can be used in the process. These include cavity wall insulation, external wall insulation, internal insulation, roof insulation, loft insulation and wall rendering. A solution is available for virtually all types of roof, wall and floor.

Insulating a building is usually the first step to be taken in a programme of energy improvements and should be done before the adoption of renewable energy technologies for the most energy efficient results and the fastest return on investment.

Energy Savings

The heat loss from a building depends upon many factors, including type of building and the material structure. This can be described using the U value for a material, which is a measure of how effective it is as an insulator. A higher U value means more heat is lost through the material and a lower U value means it is a better insulator with lower heat loss. This table shows the improvements in U values from a variety of insulation measures:

Take a look at some of the research currently underway at the University of Nottingham into the next generation of  energy efficient buildings.

Support

Westville Insulation received support from the University as part of Energy for Business. Delivered by the Energy Innovation and Collaboration team and funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Contact the Energy Innovation and Collaboration team for an informal chat about the support on offer.

Email: energy@nottingham.ac.uk
Website: www.nottingham.ac.uk/energyforbusiness
Phone: +44 (0) 115 7484969