This webinar will educate and engage building surveyors and building control professionals on the importance of sustainable practices in the maintenance, retrofitting, and conservation of domestic heritage buildings. By exploring innovative yet sensitive strategies to reduce carbon emissions while preserving architectural integrity, this event will address the challenges and opportunities in balancing heritage conservation with environmental responsibility.
This webinar will enable building surveyors and building control professionals with the knowledge and tools to make impactful contributions to reducing carbon emissions in domestic heritage buildings and improving energy efficiency. It will inspire sustainable innovation while respecting the heritage fabric, positioning attendees at the forefront of the industry’s evolving practices
It is anticipated that the webinar would cover the following:
- Understanding the carbon footprint of heritage buildings, in terms of how HBs are represented in Energy Performance Certificates and standard modelling tools.
- The unique challenges and constraints associated with retrofitting heritage buildings, looking at how households use and value their buildings and how this effects their retrofit motivations
- Innovative solutions and case studies involving embodied and lifecycle carbon
- Actionable strategies for professionals, homeowners, and stakeholders to reduce carbon footprints while preserving historical integrity.
Speaker
Dr Freya Wise, PhD, Visiting Research Fellow, Engineering and Innovation, STEM, The Open University
Dr Freya Wise will discuss her PhD research on ‘Carbon Reduction and Heritage Retention: retrofit approaches for vernacular buildings and their residents.’ The research used a survey and detailed case study of traditional buildings to explore how people value and use energy their homes and the buildings' energy performance. Freya also explored how residents' values affect the acceptability of retrofit measures and modelled the operational and embodied carbon implications of a range of retrofit measures and packages. Freya will explain how residents' comfort perceptions and energy behaviours may differ from standard assumptions. She will also provide insights on the accuracy of standard energy simulation models in representing the performance of heritage buildings.