Guidance to help combat the challenges of overheating in homes

Overheating has become commonplace in certain types of UK homes. This guidance offers information on causes of overheating and the preventative measures that can be taken, as well as providing a protocol for assessing the seriousness of a potential threat to health from exposure to high temperatures within a dwelling.

Overheating is an increasingly common threat in certain types of UK homes. Trends towards increased airtightness in new-build and refurbishment, urbanisation, combined with the potential effects of climate change, could mean more homes will suffer from overheating and increase the problem for those that already overheat.

Key points

The causes of overheating are divided into sources of heat (e.g. solar gain through the building fabric) and means of heat rejection (e.g. ability to open windows).
There are a range of preventive measures which can be applied to existing dwellings, including insulation, shading and ventilation.
The report recommends that a mix of engineering judgment and thermal modelling is used to assess the effectiveness of any given combination of remedial measures as the applicability of each is very specific to the cause of overheating.
Accompanying the guidance, the assessment protocol provides a process to be used to determine the seriousness of a potential threat to health from exposure to high temperatures within a dwelling.

The guidance builds on the English Housing Health and Safety Rating System or HHSRS (ODPM 2006), in which ‘excess heat’ is one of the risks to be assessed in dwellings by Environmental Health Professionals (EHPs).

The guidance and the associated assessment protocol were produced by BRE, in collaboration with the Warwick Medical School, the Service des Etudes Médicales, EDF, and the BRE Centre for Resilience, with funding from the BRE Trust.

Read the full report

For guidance to help combat the challenges of overheating in dwellings read the full report.

For detail on how to assess the seriousness of a potential threat to health from exposure to high temperatures within a dwelling read the assessment protocol.