Merthyr Housing Association, Wales

Building Description

Kevin Ryan Court consists of 42 self-contained flats and is a retirement home. It offers a communal lounge, kitchen, laundry facility, hairdressing salon and IT suite, as well as enclosed gardens and car parking. It also includes wheelchair access.

Many of the daily activities take place within the communal lounge. The home is supported by resident management staff and Careline alarm service. Flats range in size from studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom. The tenure is rental and MTHA is the landlord.

System installed

Each flat has been fitted with the Ambion Low Carbon Heat Panel system except a final 9 flats where tenants held out for the pre-existing storage heaters. These flats are being converted to the Ambion Low Carbon Heat Panel system as they become void.

Key Facts

• One-bedroom top-floor flat.
• Total area: 31.9m2
• Annual space heat demand – 6,112 kWh (SAP/EPC calculated)
• Annual water heating demand – 2,351 kWh (SAP/EPC calculated)
• EPC rating – C75

Real Performance data

In the graph, the black line represents the predicted annual energy use for heating, using the standard SAP calculation, for this particular flat. This equates to expected energy usage with conventional electric heating technology at 100% efficiency.

The green bars represent the actual energy used by the Ambion system in this flat – a saving of 76.9% in this example. This equates to a Performance Ratio of 4.32 (which is above the average Performance Ratio of 3.5 used in the lifetime costs analysis described above).’

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