Why a tougher Part L is a rare opportunity
Nigel Headford, director at Deceuninck Aluminium, explains how your relationship with your supplier could reach a crunch point, following new government rules that buildings will have to produce significantly less CO2 to help the country move towards net zero.
The first step towards more energy efficient buildings was announced just before Christmas, with the tighter Building Regulations coming into effect in June this year.
As we’ve been saying since the start of the latest consultation period, this could have a massive impact on the window and door industry because many systems won’t be able to meet the Future Homes and Buildings Standard 2025, when CO2 emissions from newbuild homes must be around 30% lower than current standards, and emissions from other new buildings, including offices and shops, must be reduced by 27%.
It is a whole-building approach to energy efficiency, and we must be aware that heating and powering buildings currently makes up 40% of the UK’s total energy use. Therefore, installing low carbon technology, such as solar panels and heat pumps, will be strongly recommended.
There are also changes to Approved Document F, which apply to trickle vents, and a new Approved Document O, which applies to glazing and overheating.
For the fenestration industry, the initial improvements this year will mean that windows and doors (with a glazed area of more than 60%) installed in newbuild homes will need to achieve a minimum U-value of 1.2W/m2K. For home improvement, this raises to 1.4W/m2K, which is a WER B (windows) or C (doors with >60% glazed area).
This is a reduction of 12.5% for windows in new buildings, which is estimated to be less than halfway to meeting the Future Homes and Buildings Standard in 2025.
And now that these changes to Part L have officially been announced, installers and fabricators need to be confident that the products they are fitting and manufacturing are fit for purpose. They’ve also got to bear in mind that there is no quick fix to update older systems, and nobody wants the hassle or cost of triple glazing.
Therefore, should you now start thinking about switching supplier?
When we launched Decalu at the start of 2020, we knew that after a decade of stagnant Building Regulations, the government would once again look at the UK’s housing stock to make swift efficiency gains.
This became more pressing as climate change was pushed right to the top of the agenda following COP26 in Glasgow. And homeowners now rate energy efficiency and sustainability as among the most important criteria when choosing windows and doors – just behind security.
Decalu from Deceuninck Aluminium was designed from scratch because we knew that if we took our inspiration from existing systems, we would have failed before we had even started; they were designed by and for a previous generation, and today’s demands would prove too much for them.
Designed from the ground up, Decalu was engineered to achieve U-values as low as 0.6W/m2K, which meets the new Part L regulations – as well as the stricter requirements anticipated for the Future Homes and Future Buildings Standards in 2025.
We’ve also significantly reduced manufacturing times and increased installation efficiencies, and have committed to bringing new levels of service and flexibility to aluminium systems supply. This includes dual-colour and marine grade as standard.
Working with out-of-date legacy systems, manufacturers and installers are going to be faced with significant headaches as the Building Regulations are tightened. Decalu, on the other hand, while future-proofed against tougher standards, was designed to be easy to manufacture, and easy to install, and allows margin to be built-in at every level.
Specifically, the Decalu systems range was developed to encompass a complete suite of products, and designed to minimise stockholding through the use of a single inner frame and mid-section, integrated insulation, and pre-inserted, co-extruded gaskets.
Decalu already has an army of loyal manufacturers and installers, thanks mostly to its focus on what really matters on the ground. Now that Part L will be tougher to meet by the summer – with even tougher regulations around the corner – we expect that army to grow as some systems companies will be unable to adapt accordingly.
