Amaret Chahal, co-author of Actis’ RIBA-approved CPD, aimed at helping specifiers and builders comply with more stringent energy efficiency requirements, is using her love of the Great British Bake Off to illustrate different approaches to achieving compliance
Amaret Chahal and Jason Docherty, specification managers at Actis, are using cupcakes to represent varying levels of thermal efficiency which meet the standard required under the revised Part L building regulations during the RIBA-approved CPD module: ‘Tomorrow’s Insulation Solutions for Future Homes Standards‘.
Actis’ RIBA-approved CPD looks at objectives to achieving net-zero by 2050
Amaret, who is co-author of the RIBA-approved CPD module, along with architect and Actis technical director Thomas Wiedmer, explained: “The big goal is net-zero by 2050. This CPD looks at breaking it into smaller objectives in order to start moving towards that. Revised energy efficiency targets laid down in Part L, for example, mean new-build homes have to reduce carbon emissions by 31% over previous levels.
“I’m a huge fan of The Great British Bake Off and find it really relaxing to come up with my own baking projects at the weekend, so the kitchen is full of weird wonderful and hopefully delicious cakes. Some of them are quite straightforward and others completely over the top, and I thought this was a bit like building a house. You can have ‘basic’ energy efficiency which still meets the building regulations. And you have super thermally insulated ones.
Like baking, the CPD module follows a ‘recipe approach’
“We wanted to illustrate the different targets we can achieve through having a recipe approach. If a cupcake was a house, the limiting value is the minimum thermal value which must be achieved. This is represented by a vanilla cupcake. The notional value, an ideal but more difficult to achieve thermal rating, is more like the top of the range cupcake with coloured icing, sprinkles and perhaps some mini marshmallows scattered on top.
“Just as we have a wide variety of cupcakes made from different ingredients, so can houses be built with different specifications to meet requirements within the given range of targets.
“And to drive the message home I sometimes give out cakes at the training sessions to serve as a handy reminder of what we talked about.”
To find out more about booking the RIBA-approved CPD on Tomorrow’s Insulation Solutions for Future Homes Standards or any other Actis CPDs contact solutions@insulation-actis.com.
