Heating and Ventilation:

Understanding User Behaviour

Victoria Haines Senior Lecturer and

Head of the User Centred Design Research Group

Loughborough Design School

Climate change

Climate change

Technological solutions

Consumption still increasing

World Energy Consumption by Source, From: Tverberg, G (2012) World Energy Consumption Since 1820 in Charts

Behaviour and choice

Overview

Background

User centred design

Energy demand reduction

Heating and ventilation

Suggestions for improvement

My background

Ergonomics graduate from Loughborough

User-task-environment as a central tenet

……a philosophy, with the user as the central component

User needs

Task requirements

Environment factors

My background

Wide range of past projects:

The safety of children’s toys

The design of hospital trolleys

Vehicle seating comfort

Layout of control panels

Smart home technology

Design of heating controls

Energy use in homes

Design of energy efficient technologies

Fuel poverty

Thermal comfort

Domestic energy demand reduction

To understand how and why people use

energy and how energy efficiency

measures might be adopted

Research projects

CALEBRE: Consumer-Appealing Low Energy Technologies for Building

Retrofitting, £2m funding from EPSRC and E.ON, 2008-2013

Carbon, Control and Comfort: User-centred control systems for

comfort, carbon saving and energy management, £2.1m funding from EPSRC

and E.ON, 2009-2012

Challenge 100: Alleviating 100 households from fuel poverty in 100 days,

E.ON project, 2009-2011

Thermal Energy Storage: The Future Role of Thermal Energy

Storage in the UK Energy System, £130k funding from UKERC, 2011-13

DEFACTO: Digital Energy Feedback and Control Technology Optimisation,

£1.5m funding from EPSRC, 2012-2017

i-STUTE: Interdisciplinary Centre for Storage, Transformation and

Upgrading of Thermal Energy, £5.2m funding from EPSRC, 2013-2018

Our approach

Understanding users in context

Understanding how people do things

Understanding why people do things:

values and goals

attitudes and expectations

Translating these into requirements

for designers, engineers,

housing associations etc

What do people want from their home?

WANTS:

1. A home that is comfortable to live in

2. A home that is nice to look at

3. My home to adapt to changing family or lifestyle

4. My home to be a safe place

5. My home to be a secure place

6. My home to be clean

7. My home to be efficient

What do people value in their homes?

People (in particular family)

Space

Memories

Technology provides a service:

Keeping in touch

Being entertained

Keeping warm

HAINES, V., MITCHELL, V., COOPER, C., MAGUIRE, M. 2006. Probing user values in the home environment within a technology driven Smart Home

project. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 11(5) 349-359.

Carbon, Control and Comfort project

and PhD research

Social housing tenants

Small sample in detail

tenants and landlords

Retrofitted ground source heat pumps

Mixed methods – interviews, audio

tours, diaries, probe packs, focus

groups, co-design

To understand how people create comfort in their homes and

control their heating

To investigate the experience of social housing tenants receiving

renewable heating technology and make recommendations for

improvement

CALEBRE project

Owner occupiers in solid wall houses

Small sample in detail

Attitudes to home improvement and comfort

Mixed methods – interviews, timeline, comfort

diary, temperature sensors, energy survey

To establish a validated, comprehensive

mechanism for reducing UK domestic

carbon emissions that is acceptable and

appealing to users

Challenge 100

Case study approach to cover those at highest

risk of being in fuel poverty

Recruited in partnership with local authorities in 5

areas in UK

Package of measures offered under CERT /

CESP

To determine whether fuel poverty can be

eradicated and how this is best done

Heat pumps

Some tenants explicitly told the heat pump would cut their

electricity bills

Heat pumps were set up and tenants told not to adjust them

Tenants didn’t receive instructions unless they specifically asked

for them. Some given verbal instructions but these were brief

and often the information was not retained by the tenant

They know exactly what they’re doing and they say “do this, this and this”, and you think, yep, I vaguely understood that, but go through it again. And so they go through it again, but by the time they’ve gone and the following day arrives, you’ve forgotten.

They don’t give instructions out. “You don’t need to know love”, he said “its set and you don’t need to bother with it anymore”.

Heat pumps

Most tenants do not interact with

the heat pump controls either

because they lack confidence /

understanding or because they’ve

been expressly told not to

He wrote them out and I stuck them on the heat pump . That’s just if I want to alter the temperature; you know, make it hotter.

Taking control of what you can

Taking control of what you can

Airtightness

Stage Air permeability

at 50Pa (m3/m2.h) Description of work

As built 15.57 Single glazed windows, Uninsulated walls, floor and roof space, No

draught-proofing

1 14.31

Double glazing installed, Insulation applied to walls and loft,

Draught-proofing applied to windows (excluding kitchen, bathroom

and WC) and doors, Installation of whole house, MVHR system

2 9.84

Kitchen, bathroom, WC windows and under croft trap-door draught-

proofed, Draught-proofing throughout house re-installed, Window

trickle vents blocked up

3 8.60

Service risers sealed, Pipework penetrations sealed (radiators,

water pipes etc.), Sealing around boiler flue, Covers fitted to door

locks, Kitchen fan removed and bricked up

4 5 Suspended timber ground floor insulated and sealed

Progressive sealing of the E.ON 2016 test house

Draught-proofing poorly applied to the windows and doors

Incomplete seals around the perimeter

Installing MVHR system created new gaps in the building

envelope and duct connections to the rooms

Significant effort and cost needed to achieve good airtightness

MVHR with poor airtightness increases energy use

Airtightness

Airtightness

Householder response to airtightness:

Air flow and freshness desirable

Many homes have open fireplaces and chimneys –

seen as a desirable feature

Habitual door and window opening/closing practices

Ventilation used to control damp

Feelings that draughts keep a house healthy

Poor understanding of the purpose of airtightness

and MVHR

Retrofit airtightness and MVHR systems is complex and

disruptive

Need to ensure user needs are met – understanding of

the system and its benefits, meeting user goals

BANFILL, P.F.G., SIMPSON, S.A., HAINES, V.J., MALLABAND, R.A.L., 2012. Energy-led retrofitting of solid wall dwellings – technical and user

perspectives on airtightness. Structural Survey, 30 (3) 267-279

Challenge 100

Delivering support to families in fuel poverty

Installed external wall insulation in 78 homes

Loft top up and full insulation in 39 homes

Installed energy monitors in 64 homes

Provided energy efficiency advice to 58 families

Discussed tariff and payment options with 58 families

Challenge 100

Eradicated fuel poverty for 42 families

Average FP improved from 15.2 to 10.6

Average SAP improved from 46 to 61

Reduced fuel costs by an average of £351 for each family

Measures cost an average of £6,371 per house

Practical insights into delivering support for families in fuel

poverty

Practical insights

Practical insights

E.ON, (2010). Challenge 100 Final Report: Tackling fuel poverty for 100 families, in 100 homes, in 100 days. E.ON UK plc

Suggestions for improvement

Information needs to be supplied on:

the best ways to ‘live’ with technologies such as a heat pump or

MVHR, to allow people to know how to optimise its use

what to expect practically during installation and during usage,

including running costs

explanations of functions and symbols on their heating controls

electricity tariff advice to ensure households are on most suitable

contact information

Written information (including diagrams with labels) must be

simple and clear, in ‘plain English’. Text size and font

appropriate for older people with poorer eyesight

Suggestions for improvement

Ensure the technology is usable and no more complex than

necessary

Provide controls that are appropriate, perhaps with standardised

controls to ensure consistent advice is given

Give tenants a route to discuss issues openly

Provide follow up visits (after a period of adjustment), to check

the system and to answer any questions. This should be a

personal visit

Council staff should have better training with regards to heat

pump systems so that they can talk confidently with tenants

Provide reference material to refresh staff over time

Ensure installations are of highest quality, and know what to

look for to check!

Bridging the Gap

Design also has a role to play, to improve products,

systems and services

User centred design bridges the gap between users and

technologists, engineers, scientists, designers,

landlords…

..to achieve a more acceptable

and appealing outcome for all

Acknowledgements

EPSRC / E.ON who funded the CCC and CALEBRE projects

Natalie Moore, Becky Mallaband and Val Mitchell and other members of the research

teams who were involved in this work

Victoria Haines Loughborough Design School

v.j.haines@lboro.ac.uk

Thank You