Edinburgh Napier University

  The domestic sector accounted for 30.5% of the 2010 final UK energy consumption, of which around 66% was used towards space heating. The energy consumption within domestic buildings can be influenced by various factors ranging from the household characteristics such as occupancy levels and patterns, living standards and cultural habits to differences in build type, energy use behaviours and general energy efficiency within the domestic sector. Modelling the domestic building stock allows for energy consumption to be calculated meaning that predictions can be made for future energy trends and the potential impacts and savings of implementing various energy efficiency improvement measures.

Current UK housing stock models make crude assumptions about internal temperatures due to limited knowledge on actual winter-time temperatures and a lack of understanding on room by room temperature variations. Many models simply use one average temperature for the whole model (based on spot readings or heat balance methods) or some use the UK Government standard of 21 ºC for the main living space and 18 ºC for the rest of the dwelling. Using crude temperature assumptions can result in either an overestimation or underestimation of energy used to heat a dwelling to that temperature, based on the model inputs relating to the thermal and energy performance of a dwelling.

This study investigates the inter-room variation in temperature within a selection of UK homes to develop a better understanding of the extent to which temperatures vary room by room relating to the household characteristics, the house type, the energy system or a combination of these factors. Resulting in a better appreciation into the appropriateness of common assumptions made within UK building stock models about average household temperatures and the level of temperature variation represented. Whereas many energy models have adapted an approach of two main zones of different temperatures to calculate energy consumption, this study has shown that many UK homes now seem to have adapted a more uniform temperature distribution indicating a preference of one zone to represent the whole dwelling. This study also highlights the variation exhibited in occupant‟s perceptions of comfortable temperatures within their homes.