Old Shettleston Road

Previous work for Shettleston Housing Association (SHA) led to ECD’s appointment to carry out a decarbonisation feasibility study for their tenement flats on Old Shettleston Road. The brief was to see how deep a retrofit could reasonably be achieved with residents in situ, and to ensure that energy bills went down on account of the works.

We worked with SHA to develop a strategy that staged the necessary interventions around the residents. The first stage would take place with residents in situ and be limited to less disruptive measures and those that prepare the homes for future stages. Then further works would be carried out in communal areas and to the outside of the building, with residents still in their homes. These have a really significant impact on carbon emissions and resident comfort. Finally, as the tenanted flats become vacant over time, SHA would take the opportunity to implement the deepest retrofit measures, installing internal wall insulation, below ground floor insulation and replacing gas boilers with heat pumps or direct electric heating. While there are limitations to the overall retrofit because it is staged, really impactful changes are possible.

The stages were modelled in PHPP, both for the building as a whole and sample individual flats, to ensure that energy bills would go down for all residents. The modelling also allowed us to model the impact of each stage on the building’s carbon emissions, demonstrating that these could be reduced by around 80%.

In order to understand the building better and verify our assumptions we supported our work additional information. We have had the building’s stone analysed and hygrothermal modelling carried out, we are measuring in situ U values, and with SHA put together a questionnaire for residents that revealed useful information about their priorities.

The study has been presented to SHA’s board, Glasgow City Council’s Retrofit Advisory Group, as well as at a meeting with MSP Patrick Harvie. SHA have appointed us to carry out further work, monitoring existing energy use and temperatures, as well as detailed design of replacement doors and windows. This will address how this can be staged, so that the urgent work is carried out imminently, with future retrofit phases to follow. Meanwhile a workshop with SHA will address how their maintenance planning can be better integrated with retrofit measures.