Prio-climate

Renovation in social housing

Renovation is at the top of the EU-priority list to higher the energetic performance of buildings and to acquire a high-level indoor air quality for sanity reasons.

Media campaigns and subsidy strategies are used to convince private owners to invest in their houses.  All parties together need to take actions to arrive to a fully renovate building stock in 2050.

However, an important group of people do not own the house they live in. For these houses the renovation rate is much lower, while the financial and health costs remain to be paid by the dwellers themselves. This is even more true for families who cannot even afford to rent a house or apartment to stay in. Many of these families rely on social housing companies who make apartments of house available against a low monthly rent. These houses are most-often not adapted to today’s energy and living standards.

Foyer Anderlechtois

The Social Housing Company Foyer Anderlechtois is exemplary in Belgium for houses with a lower living standard of their stock. They manage about 3.700 tenements (apartments and houses) in Anderlecht. About 500 houses are situated at the quartier ‘Bon Air’, or ‘Good Air’.

Action plan

Foyer Anderlechtois’ action plan is to renovate 86 houses in 2018-2020 in Bon Air. This renovation includes modernization, isolation and ventilation. But, just like in every project and now even more, choices must be made. Due to budgetary reasons. And ventilation is often neglected in favour of (e.g.) isolation. While a good ventilation is a precondition for a good air quality and subsequently a healthier life.

This good ventilation is reached more easily with a ventilation system type D hybrid where windows are being opened and closed automatically based on censored data. On the other hand, a type C can be used with fixed ventilation grills in the windows. Variations in between exist.

Living Lab

This project is initiated to set up a living lab where in multiple houses multiple ventilation systems will be introduced with variations in costs and in ease of use. The brings us to three research questions:

• How do other renovation aspects have an impact on the ventilation performances and needs?
• How do dwellers in a real day-to-day situation make use of the ventilation system?
• How satisfied are the dwellers with the ventilation system in use?

It is in particular the day-to-day performance of the ventilation system, the usage by the dwellers and their appreciation about it that are essential in the decision to promote a certain ventilation system. These essentials are brought into light by MOTUS.

Towards a reproduction approach

About 20 households will be followed over the period of one year. Over this period dwellers will keep a registration of their behaviour and answering (triggered) questions about the air quality (e.g. during the night) and their interaction with technical devices in the house (opening or closing windows, switching on/off ventilation system). At the same time technical measurements will take place to grasp information on the temperature, CO2, amount of particles, … .

Both streams of data need to arrive to a balanced renovation concept that includes ventilation solutions and that is affordable, replicable and acceptable by dwellers in social housing.