Weather created for new homes - 10th February 2023

This laboratory in England – the Energy House Labs – can create various weather conditions to research energy use in homes.

According to recent government laws, carbon emissions from new houses need to decrease by 2025. Labs like these can help the building industry develop quickly, says Labs' director, Professor Will Swan.

Will Swan: "When you try and understand, you know, how a house is energy efficient, you normally have to wait for the weather, so here we bring the weather to the research problem. We can compress a two year experiment into sometimes a matter of weeks."

Temperatures within the laboratory can be made to fall to -20°C or rise as high as 40°C. There's a snow machine, as well as a wind machine. The test houses in the centre might look fairly ordinary, but inside it's a very different story. The buildings are packed with new technology, to help discover ways to reduce energy costs and become more environmental.

Will Swan: "What we're experimenting on is everything. So doors, windows, insulation, fabric, right the way down to the heating and cooling systems within the homes. The experiments we're doing here now with our partners are really to try and understand how we deliver those future net zero homes in the UK."

Technical director Tom Cox is very excited by the project. They've had the opportunity to work with some amazing new technological products.

Tom Cox: "We've got the panel heating, which is a point source in the room, and we've got a very unique research product up here which is an infra-red coving."

For Cox, the main benefit is that all the different technologies can work together as one system.

Tom Cox: "So one of the key technologies that we're trialling on this house is almost like a building management system for residential buildings."

Tom Cox: "You connect all of that technology into a single interface. It's almost like the Alexa of the the home energy system."

Tom Cox: "And that can be automated as much as the occupant wants."

As energy costs rise and climate change issues worsen, this research is necessary. It could be an important step in reducing carbon emissions.