Tackling cold homes: a national infrastructure priority? Rather appropriately on Cold Homes Week ministers have been told that reducing the number of cold, leaky houses in the UK should be made a national infrastructure priority. It seems there is now widespread, cross-party support for this. While this will feel like old news to us at Parity Projects and many of our industry […]

Home Energy Audit / Assessment, Retrofit Design Services, Energy Performance Certificate; which one do you really need and how do you see through the jargon? With the amount of organisations out there offering ‘energy audits’ or ‘energy assessments’ these days, particularly since the demise of the Government’s Green Deal scheme, it can be difficult to know where to start looking if you’re a homeowner. While we are yet to come across a service that offers the value of our own […]

Smarter investment for housing associations – CROHM vs EPC recommendations If you are looking for a way to improve the energy efficiency of your worst performing stock then you might turn to your EPC certificate for recommendations. However, Parity have shown impressive savings can be made by using the minimum SAP analysis as part of the CROHM (Carbon Reduction Options for Housing Managers) stock assessment […]

A review of ‘Solid Wall Insulation: Unlocking Demand and Driving up Standards’ , Peter Hansford, Chief Construction Adviser to the UK Government. One key area of retrofit that we are repeatedly asked about by Home Energy Masterplan clients is solid wall insulation (SWI). This isn’t surprising when you consider that there are over 8 million homes in the UK with solid, uninsulated walls. It’s also one of the retrofit measures with the greatest potential savings. It was […]

Some thoughts on low energy retrofit this autumn Now that we’re officially into autumn, it’s fast approaching that time of year again when many of us (myself included) start thinking about how soon is ‘too soon’ to stick the heating on. Having spent most of last week working in the Lake District I can tell you that for some that time is already […]

Parity Projects at 10 years old On 5th September 2015 it was Parity Projects’ 10th birthday. Russell Smith our MD summed up what the tens years have meant to him on the evening of the 17th September when we had a small celebration. This is what he said. ———————————————————————– Hi everyone. Lovely to see you all here tonight. Its been 10 […]

Parity Staff Discuss our Cycle to Work Scheme At Parity we always try our best to practice what we preach. That’s why just under a year ago we launched our own cycle to work scheme. Unlike the cycle to work schemes provided by some employers as part of the UK Government’s Green Transport Initiative which offer a purchase payment plan for new bikes, our […]

One Million Homes CROHMed Over the last couple of days we’ve finally had the chance to tally up the number of houses we’ve analysed through our CROHM stock assessment service for social housing, local authorities and private landlords, and it turns out that without realising we’ve passed the one million homes milestone! To mark that achievement, we’ve interviewed our Technical […]

Why the DECC’s new RHI ‘calculator’ doesn’t quite tell you all you need to know…… This week the DECC launched their RHI (Renewable Heat Incentive) ‘calculator’, with an aim of giving homeowners “a clear idea of the payments they could receive if they install a renewable heating system”. So…. does it do this? Well, yes it does, albeit with some assumptions about your property and how you’re using it, but […]

Minimum standards, maximum benefits Today the UK Green Building Council and WWF have published a report they jointly commissioned from us here at Parity Projects, investigating the costs and benefits of the forthcoming minimum standards for privately rented homes. Amidst concerns from some that the regulations would place an undue burden on landlords, the analysis shows that in fact […]

A record breaking home! Energy figures for 2015

Ok, so its our own record, but we’ve had the lowest calendar year energy usage for our demo house so far. I’m putting it down to 3 changes over last year – a) slightly lower occupancy with the children being out at school b) a very mild 12 months c) some remediation work to some […]

Smarter investment for housing associations – CROHM vs EPC recommendations

If you are looking for a way to improve the energy efficiency of your worst performing stock then you might turn to your EPC certificate for recommendations. However, Parity have shown impressive savings can be made by using the minimum SAP analysis as part of the CROHM (Carbon Reduction Options for Housing Managers) stock assessment […]

A review of ‘Solid Wall Insulation: Unlocking Demand and Driving up Standards’ , Peter Hansford, Chief Construction Adviser to the UK Government.

One key area of retrofit that we are repeatedly asked about by Home Energy Masterplan clients is solid wall insulation (SWI). This isn’t surprising when you consider that there are over 8 million homes in the UK with solid, uninsulated walls. It’s also one of the retrofit measures with the greatest potential savings. It was […]

Some thoughts on low energy retrofit this autumn

Now that we’re officially into autumn, it’s fast approaching that time of year again when many of us (myself included) start thinking about how soon is ‘too soon’ to stick the heating on. Having spent most of last week working in the Lake District I can tell you that for some that time is already […]

Parity Projects at 10 years old

On 5th September 2015 it was Parity Projects’ 10th birthday. Russell Smith our MD summed up what the tens years have meant to him on the evening of the 17th September when we had a small celebration. This is what he said. ———————————————————————– Hi everyone. Lovely to see you all here tonight. Its been 10 […]

Summer overheating and retrofit

It’s often argued that introducing deep retrofit to a property increases the risk of overheating. In this post I’ll attempt to show why a properly designed deep retrofit shouldn’t cause overheating and how, by following some simple tips, you should be able to keep your house comfortable whether it has been retrofitted or not. The first […]

Parity Staff Discuss our Cycle to Work Scheme

At Parity we always try our best to practice what we preach. That’s why just under a year ago we launched our own cycle to work scheme. Unlike the cycle to work schemes provided by some employers as part of the UK Government’s Green Transport Initiative which offer a purchase payment plan for new bikes, our […]

Comparison to Passivhaus – update

Way back in September 2013 we posted a piece comparing our demo house to Passivhaus and Enerphit. I’ve provided updated figures here based on our actual bills for 2014: The figures pretty much speak for themselves. Remember, we didn’t follow Passivhaus, we just followed sensible principles, worked out the cost effective solutions applicable to our house, […]

Feature on London Live’s Place Invaders

Our demo house was recently featured on London Lives’s Place Invaders. If you don’t want to watch the main presenter rocking round some pretty silly houses then skip to 22 minutes in. It’s a quick fire tour of the house pointing out the key features and ending up with my top tips. […]

Renewable Heat Incentive for our Demo House

I eventually got round to applying for the Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive for the solar thermal system on our demo house. We’d previously received £300 from the Renewable Heat Incentive Premium Payment which rightly reduces the amount we will received. (not the best picture but the solar thermal is in the middle on the flat […]