Scottish building contractor Cruden Building & Renewals has started work on the BRE Refurbished House.

It is one of 10 demonstration homes being built on the BRE Innovation Park @ Ravenscraig that will be used to shape future housing in the country.

Using both historical design information and traditional materials, the project's builders will recreate a full-scale 'four-in-a-block' typical Scottish apartment dwelling, of which there are 265,000 in Scotland.

This type of dwelling, where there are two flats on the ground floor and two on the first floor, is one of the worst performing apartment building types both thermally and acoustically in the UK. As part of the project, each of the four compartments in the dwelling will be refurbished using different retrofit approaches and using different materials and technologies.

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The units will then be monitored over time to provide real performance data on energy efficiency and thermal comfort, indoor air quality, acoustic performance and cost.

The project, which is being delivered by BRE Scotland, Edinburgh Napier University and Historic Scotland will then enable an assessment to be made on the cost effectiveness of fabric upgrades for the building style, for walls, windows, roofs and services.

The adopted methodology will also allow an upscaling approach to be developed which can be rolled out to multiple dwellings making them more energy efficient, less costly to run and with minimum carbon emissions.

BRE Scotland Director David Kelly said: "Scotland has a high level of fuel poverty, with approximately 25% of homes spending more than 10% of their total income on energy bills.

"This is a shocking and unacceptable situation and one which we aim to change with the host of new knowledge this project will generate."

(JP/CD)