Indoor Environmental Quality and Health Implications of Building Retrofit and Occupant Behaviour in Social Housing

Poor housing quality contributes to poor Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and overheating with older adults, children, pregnant women, and those living in poverty most at risk. While retrofit strategies could help to reduce carbon emissions by improving building energy efficiency, they could simultaneously lead to ‘unintended’ outcomes including overheating, damp, mould, and exposure to harmful indoor air pollutants by making buildings more airtight and trapping heat and air pollutants inside. Occupants’ lifestyles, attitudes, and awareness have also been identified as some of the key challenges when it comes to improving energy performance, winter/summer thermal comfort, and IAQ in buildings. This paper provides insight into the effects of energy efficient retrofit strategies and occupant behaviour on energy performance, IAQ, thermal comfort, and health, with a focus on older people living in social housing. A mixed method is employed involving: (1) physical measurements, to record actual energy consumption and indoor environmental conditions (i.e., temp., RH%, CO2); (2) questionnaire surveys, to assess occupants’ behaviours and health; (3) dynamic thermal modelling, to evaluate the effects of retrofit strategies; and (4) thermal imaging, to assess the building fabric performance and identify possible defects. The results revealed that although retrofit strategies reduced energy consumption by up to 60%, some resulted in significant risk of overheating. Occupants’ behaviours combined with debatable building management practices also contributed to risks of overheating and poor IAQ that could negatively affect health and wellbeing of building occupants in the long-term.