Adopting new home technologies

Numerous new technologies facilitate significant reduction of carbon footprint related to domestic energy consumption, e.g. PVs providing renewable energy, or increase safety and security, e.g. fire and smoke alarms reducing risk of fire related deaths of the inhabitants. New or retrofit homes can produce overall more energy than is consumed by the inhabitants. This is highly desirable given the international efforts to urgently reduce by 90% the energy use in buildings currently contributing to 40% of the global energy consumption. However in practice low energy homes regularly use twice the energy predicted, a phenomenon known as the performance gap. One of key known culprits contributing to this gap is the unintended use of the technologies installed or poor maintenance or calibration thwarting the optimal system performance. For example 40% of the inhabitants living for over a year in a low energy retrofit apartment block never used the extract ventilation fans installed to ensure sufficient air quality and thermal comfort. This resulted in mould growth in the winter and severe overheating in the summer that could have been significantly reduced had the technology been used as intended by the designers. Instead, energy hungry portable 800W air conditioning units were installed by some inhabitants to mitigate overheating that could have been prevented with the installed fans – using just 2W. In another new built energy efficient housing development none of the inhabitants had cleaned their mechanical ventilation filters a year into occupancy, despite best-practice guidance to do so. Clogged filters cause significant system underperformance leading to poor indoor air quality and energy consumption increase of up to ca. 9-18% depending on the system type.

Our published socio-technical case study of 40 new built and retrofit homes in Leeds explored the performance and usability of the mechanical and electrical systems used in these homes. We also developed a social learning tool that allowed us to explore the process of inhabitant’s developing their daily technology practises.

Findings

We discovered some real ‘out of the box’ thinking resulting from inhabitants’ contextualised understanding of the resources and options available to them. One inhabitant even used two different kettles for boiling water: an electric one for sunny spells to use electricity generated on site with photovoltaics and a gas heated kettle for other times. This lowered their energy bills and shaved the unwelcome peaks typical for the intermittent solar energy supply to the national grid. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were major differences among the inhabitants in terms of their skills and understanding of how to work with the technology systems installed. An interesting question emerged: could the inhabitants exploit their differences in skills and understanding through collective learning to disseminate and support best-practice? Surprisingly in both of the studied housing developments we found positive answer to our question.

Collective learning environments

In the two retrofitted urban blocks (comprising of over 400 apartments) a closed Facebook group for the residents proved to be the key collective learning channel of choice in terms of technology issues. Troubleshooting in response to reported home systems failures offered instant support and quality advice from other group members. One water leakage affecting few floors was quickly traced by neighbours to a specific apartment even when the inhabitants were away once an alarm was raised in the group. Discussions online helped to share individual experiences of interaction with technologies among the community. Some inhabitants developed know-how to cope with unintuitive controls and shared their solutions including links to manuals, pictures or videos. Key comfort related issues were also discussed within the group: overheating and noise pollution are two of the biggest challenges facing urban housing today. Not all advice was helpful, including the suggestion to open the cooling fridge to a complaint about overheating or to buy a warming cat in response to complaints of cold. The quality of advice needed additional checking as there was no recognised expert actively engaged in the discussions. Despite this, the group was highly valued as a first contact point with any questions related to micro climate control or other home use related issues.

In the 20 units co-housing development, where the inhabitants intentionally developed strong ties, peer to peer discussion was the preferred option for solving any emerging home use issues. However the drawback here was that the conversations remained solely between the participating parties – no one else was exposed to the learning or was available to correct any misunderstandings. The inhabitants here preferred to solve a clearly defined problem with their neighbour instead engaging in broader inhabitant conversations concerning energy use practises. The designated maintenance task team took the initiative, however, to create a leaflet containing all the relevant information in an accessible form for all the residents and to organise a dedicated on-line log of repair needs – illustrating another form of collective learning.

New technologies supporting ambitious energy efficiency targets in housing are often challenging for the inhabitants, requiring a change in habits and the need to gain new skills and understanding to support their needs. Without this inhabitants learn to ignore the technologies and work around them instead, without engaging in the necessary maintenance. Creating a collective learning environment for improving household carbon footprints, energy strategy design, maintenance and interaction with technology in the home is a key prerequisite for tackling the housing performance gap – social media and community maintenance teams provide a way forward.