Vent-Axia has welcomed the Government’s publication of its Healthy Homes Standard, a set of design requirements and good practice guidance for building homes that is designed to support the delivery of healthier living environments.
Created for use by Homes England and the people they work with, such as builders, designers, and planners, ‘Healthy Homes – a foundation for healthier and resilient communities’ is a useful tool for all housing providers and developers to ensure new homes are designed to be healthy and follow good design practice.
The design of new homes plays a vital role in preventing many avoidable health problems. Ensuring good indoor air quality (IAQ), comfortable temperatures, plenty of natural light, and energy efficiency is key to creating homes that minimise the risk of respiratory conditions, overheating, and stress-related health problems. A Healthy Home refers to a new dwelling, whether a house, bungalow, apartment or other type of home, designed to support long-term physical and mental wellbeing, while supporting people to live active and fulfilling lives.
A key feature of the new standard is its focus on indoor air quality and ventilation. Ensuring a home is effectively ventilated is essential for good health, with the standard stating that ‘the preferred ventilation strategy for Healthy Homes is a high-efficiency (greater than 75% efficient) Mechanically Ventilated Heat Recovery (MVHR) system, designed in accordance with the Passivhaus standard’. This focus reflects growing awareness of the importance of fresh, filtered air and low carbon ventilation systems in modern, airtight homes. Meanwhile, a core requirement of the standard is a whole life carbon assessment for both homes and wider development infrastructure.
Vent-Axia’s Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq range meets these requirements, offering Passivhaus-accredited MVHR that delivers excellent heat recovery and a specific electric power as low as 0.22 Wh/m3. One of the quietest systems on the market, it also provides near silent operation (tested and verified by SRL). The Sentinel Econiq is also now available with a newly published Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). This new EPD offers transparency for specifiers and developers, helping them make informed decisions when selecting ventilation solutions that align with the Healthy Homes Standard.
“We are pleased to see that the Government’s new Healthy Homes Standard recognises the crucial role ventilation plays in improving indoor air quality and so helping protect households’ health. But the standard also goes one step further, stating the importance of highly efficient MVHR with low embodied carbon and low sound levels. Our Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq offers all this and more, making it the ideal choice for housebuilders looking for Healthy Homes compliant ventilation,” said Joe Brawn, Product and Marketing Director at Vent Axia. “We are also delighted to announce that we now have an EPD for the Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq, offering transparency for specifiers. The document provides embodied carbon information and documents the environmental impacts of its entire lifecycle.”
The Healthy Homes Standard has five themes, including efficiency and comfort. Comfort objectives include providing good levels of ventilation and IAQ, and ensuring thermal comfort; while efficiency objectives include reducing operational energy use and energy bills, reducing embodied carbon and collecting in-use energy performance data. Vent-Axia’s Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq achieves all these objectives, providing low carbon heat recovery ventilation for airtight, thermally efficient new-build homes. It also offers exceptional efficiency, near-silent operation and complete controllability, providing excellent IAQ and occupant comfort.
The Passivhaus-certified Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq is available in three different sizes covering a range of properties, with left and right-handed versions available. Its Constant Volume feature ensures it operates effectively, efficiently, and reliably, providing a healthy and comfortable indoor environment, maintaining pre-set airflow irrespective of system pressure within its performance capabilities.
Designed to improve IAQ and occupant health, the Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq’s Sentinel-X control platform features a wide array of sensors and controls, ensuring the highest levels of IAQ. The Sentinel control logic built within the MVHR ensures the Sentinel Econiq system operates optimally with automated functions such as its built-in intelligent humidistat, frost protection and summer bypass, providing comfort in the home. With an increase in thermally efficient homes, overheating can be a challenge, so the product’s automatic summer bypass is designed to provide free cooling when available and to eliminate performance loss.
To further improve IAQ the solution offers ePM2.5 (F7) filters as standard, in line with Passivhaus design requirements. The MVHR filters provide numerous benefits including improving IAQ by removing allergens and particulate matter. They also maintain the system’s energy efficiency, reduce heating and cooling costs, and enhance longevity of the system.
Meanwhile, to ensure the Sentinel Econiq operates efficiently to its design intent and to help housebuilders comply with Part F (Means of Ventilation) of the Building Regulations, Vent-Axia has developed its pioneering Commissioning Wizard for the Sentinel Econiq, making it the easiest system on the market to commission. Available online and via a smartphone app, the Commissioning Wizard makes it very simple to comply with Part F allowing the ventilation installer to input all the necessary information that Part F requires for compliance. It will then output a complete detailed report for building control to sign off.
The Sentinel Econiq is controlled by the innovative Vent-Axia Connect smartphone app as standard. This provides households with year-round control of their ventilation from the comfort of their sofas and allows a multitude of functions to be adjusted. With smart-phone compatible controls, householders have the flexibility to increase the ventilation rate during hot periods in the summer or reduce the speed to minimise running costs while away. The app is available for free on iOS and Android.
For further information on all products and services visit www.vent-axia.com.
Header image: Copyright Richard O’Donoghue/AdobeStock
