Novel Retrofit Technology Incorporating Robots for Lower Energy Healthy Buildings

There are ~22.2 million dwellings in England. One in five (21%) dwellings were built before 1919. About three quarters of these older dwellings have been subject to at least some major alterations since they were built, mostly extensions or loft conversions. A further 17.9% of dwellings was built between 1919 and 1944 and further 18% from 1945 to 1964. Dwellings built after 1990 account for just 12% of the stock. A large proportion of English housing stock is thus considered as heritage.
Novel technologies for retrofit of our ageing stock would enable us to reduce its carbon emission and alleviate fuel poverty in a cost-effective way. This is essential for preservation of the heritage housing stock. The company Q-Bot has developed an innovative system for reducing heat loss through suspended timber floors that applies PU insulation from underneath. A robot is inserted into the floor void, surveys the void and condition of the floor, sprays insulation to the underside of the floor boards, and verifies the area and depth of insulation applied. This keeps the appearance of the floor (which could itself be considered as a heritage element) on the warm dry side, while maintaining ventilation within the floor void. Access can be made through an air vent in the outside wall, or through a small opening in the floor from within the property. This minimises disruption to residents and results in a typical in-stall time of 1-2 days.
Initial 'in-house' experiments indicated that spraying insulation to suspended timber floors could reduce heat loss through the floor by 85%, reduce temperature stratification within the room, and reduce draughts in the property by up to 40%. The project will address the important question of the impact of the PU foam itself on the indoor environment and on occupants during the installation and afterwards. The currently used PU foam appears to contain ~30 Volatile Organic Compounds, some with unknown effects on human health. This could potentially create a risk to inhabitants due to exposure to chemicals that might, in the future, turn out to be (or have been) harmful. The proposal will develop suitable analytical techniques to explore the impact of various PU foams (and other sprayable insulation materials) on environmental and energy performance of retrofitted historic houses, and develop a comprehensive evaluation methodology to assess and model the effect of spray insulation on historic domestic properties.
The project strongly supports the CDT Science and Engineering in Arts, Heritage and Archaeology as it supports the development of two of its strands: Data to Knowledge and Knowledge to Enterprise. It aligns with the EPSRC priorities 'Materials Characterisation' and 'Data to Knowledge

1. Academic beneficiaries: The CDT will develop scientific and engineering excellence in the domain of cultural heritage scientific and engineering research and more fundamentally in the enabling domains of imaging and sensing, visualisation, modelling, computational analysis and digital technology. While the CDT focusses on the complex materials and environments of the arts, heritage and archaeology, it will be broadly influential due to the range of novel methods and approaches to be developed in collaboration with the Diamond Light Source and the National Physical Laboratory. The establishment of a student and alumni-managed 'Heritage Science Research Network', will enable CDT's cross-disciplinarity to bridge EPSRC subject boundaries impacting scholarly research in the arts and humanities and social sciences.
2. Heritage beneficiaries: The CDT will have a transformational effect on public heritage institutions by dovetailing 'Data creation', 'Data to knowledge' and 'Knowledge to enterprise' research strands. The resulting advances in understanding, interpretation, conservation, presentation, management, communication, visualisation of heritage, and improved visitor participation and engagement will lead to significantly improved public service and value creation in this sector. This will sustainably boost the cultural heritage tourism sector which requires significant heritage science capacity to maintain the UK's cultural assets, i.e. museum, library, archive and gallery collections and historic buildings. 15 globally leading heritage Partner institutions (both national and international) will contribute to dissemination through established and new heritage networks e.g. the EU Heritage Portal (http://www.heritageportal.eu/).
3. Industry, particularly three crucial sectors: (i) sensors and instrumentation, which underpin a wide range of industrial activity despite the small size (UK Sales £3Bn), and are a key enabling technology for successful economic growth: 70% of the revenues of FTSE 100 companies (sales of £120Bn) are in sectors that are highly dependent on instrumentation; (ii) creative industries, increasingly vital to the UK with 2M employees in creative jobs and the sector contributing £60Bn a year (7.3%) to the UK economy. Over the past decade, the creative sector has grown at twice the rate of the economy as a whole; (iii) heritage tourism sector contributing £7.4Bn p.a. to the UK economy and supporting 466,000 equivalent jobs. Without the CDT, this crucially important economy sector will experience an unsustainable loss of capacity. The impact will be achieved in collaboration with our Partners: Electronics, Sensors, Photonics KTN, TIGA and Qi3, a technology commercialisation, business development and knowledge transfer company.
4. Public: The intensive public engagement activities are built into CDT including dissemination and engagement events at heritage institutions, popular science conferences and fora, e.g. Cheltenham Science Festival, European Science Open Forum and British Science Festival, as well as events organised by the HEIs' Beacon projects (e.g. UCL Bright Club). Cross-cohort encouragement to engage in these events will realise the substantial potential for the CDT to popularise science and engineering. More widely, visitors and users of heritage will benefit from the development of new and more engaging presentation tools, and pervasive and mobile computing.
5. Policy: SEAHA will engage with policy makers, by contributing evidence to policies and research agendas (the PI is actively involved in the EU JPI Cultural Heritage and Global Change, in which she advised on the development of the EU Cultural Heritage Research Agenda endorsed on 22/03/2013) and develop policy briefings for governmental and parliamentary bodies. The CDT is also a strategically important development of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme ensuring continued global UK leadership in the SEAHA domain.