An Investigation of Climatically Responsive Ultra-Low Energy Housing in Rural Scotland: a Case Study
type: CreativeWork
description: In rural Scotland there has been a trend over the last 40 years towards mass market housing development which employs standardised housing models and suburban planning layouts. These have little relationship to rural landscape characteristics, regional climatic variations or historic rural communities. While they comply with current building standards, they fall significantly short of proposed improvements for energy performance which require all new homes to be ‘Zero Carbon’ by 2016/17 if practical and the European target of ‘Nearly Zero Energy Homes’ by the end of 2020. It is recognised that changes in legislation to reach these targets are falling behind schedule and energy analysis methods are flawed due to outdated calculation methodologies and imprecise climate data. This research firstly provides an in-depth context for rural housing provision outlining the drivers and legislative requirements. The first section of the literature review investigates planning and current practice in housing, whilst the second section outlines the requirements for improved energy efficiency from the European to Scottish contexts. The research then goes on to quantify the effects of regional climatic variation, in nine areas across Scotland, on space heating energy demand (SSHD). It utilises a best practice ultra-low energy housing prototype to demonstrate the requirement for regional solutions. All of the studies use a customised version of the Passivhaus Planning Package, an industry leading energy quantification methodology for heating energy calculations. A series of studies define the design envelope for achieving regional solutions by quantifying the relationship between the variation of design and form on the SSHD in the extremes of the Scottish regional climates. The variables relate to common metrics: orientation, glazing areas, roof forms and building typology. A separate study also compares the effect of Zero Carbon Homes and Passivhaus performance specification on SS…
abstract: In rural Scotland there has been a trend over the last 40 years towards mass market housing development which employs standardised housing models and suburban planning layouts. These have little relationship to rural landscape characteristics, regional climatic variations or historic rural communities. While they comply with current building standards, they fall significantly short of proposed improvements for energy performance which require all new homes to be ‘Zero Carbon’ by 2016/17 if practical and the European target of ‘Nearly Zero Energy Homes’ by the end of 2020. It is recognised that changes in legislation to reach these targets are falling behind schedule and energy analysis methods are flawed due to outdated calculation methodologies and imprecise climate data. This research firstly provides an in-depth context for rural housing provision outlining the drivers and legislative requirements. The first section of the literature review investigates planning and current practice in housing, whilst the second section outlines the requirements for improved energy efficiency from the European to Scottish contexts. The research then goes on to quantify the effects of regional climatic variation, in nine areas across Scotland, on space heating energy demand (SSHD). It utilises a best practice ultra-low energy housing prototype to demonstrate the requirement for regional solutions. All of the studies use a customised version of the Passivhaus Planning Package, an industry leading energy quantification methodology for heating energy calculations. A series of studies define the design envelope for achieving regional solutions by quantifying the relationship between the variation of design and form on the SSHD in the extremes of the Scottish regional climates. The variables relate to common metrics: orientation, glazing areas, roof forms and building typology. A separate study also compares the effect of Zero Carbon Homes and Passivhaus performance specification on SS…
author: Pearson, Alexander David
language: eng
keywords: Passivhaus, Low energy housing, Architecture, Rural, Scotland
date published: 2014
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:07:59Z
provider: University of Dundee
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Dundee