Since early 2023, I have been working with Awaretag to bring together their years of experience working with housing providers and surveyors on insulation and moisture issues; together with modern technologies to provide meaningful analysis and insights into the root causes of mould, damp and energy inefficiencies.
Understanding mould and damp is not an easy task. It requires you to not only understand the temperature and humidity at a given time, but also the spaces that you take those measurements in; the durations and frequency that those spaces and elements have those measured values; the ways we interact with the spaces as occupants; and the interrelationships between all of the above.
Building a platform that considers all of this is complex. We’ve worked across disciplines, with surveyors such as Learie Gonsalves, director of surveying firm One Building Solutions; charity organisations like Green Doctor; Dr Syed Ali Raza Zaidi and PhD researchers Abdelaziz Salama and Mohammed Hameed; as well as countless other individuals and companies spanning surveying, environmental modelling, machine learning, UI and behavioural change.
As a software developer I have had the continuous task of refining, operationalising and integrating complex analytical models into a system which is already helping property owners across the UK improve conditions in their homes.
Solving complex problems.
When addressing the problem of mould, damp and insulation it is not enough for technology companies to provide high-tech systems without consideration for the realities of working with them. The first questions will always be, “Great, so where do we begin?”, “How long will it take to set up?”, “How can I make sense of this?”, and most importantly, “What do I do about it?”.
Each step of the way as we built this system, these questions were paramount.
“Where do I begin?” – Fixing EPC with a better predictor of energy performance
From day one we found people speaking in the language of EPC with understandable frustration. “My home is B rated, yet I can’t keep the temperature above 16°C?”. We quickly realised EPC was not an adequate indicator of the energy efficiency of properties, nor was it going to be any help identifying the most at risk properties.
We set to work designing a stronger indicator. An indicator that considers all of the material factors that relate to the energy efficiency; build style, age, geometry, etc. But best of all, derived using only information that we already have on the majority of properties in the UK. No manual input required.
This indicator, available on the Aware platform can tell us the estimated energy usage of a property and therefore the estimated cost-to-heat at any temperature in any season.
Applying it to the 22 million properties with EPC records, we found that 18% of properties rated EPC A perform worse than the average D rated property. See the box plot below.
It is clear that, although EPC is able to represent a trend in energy efficiency, the variation within each band makes it practically meaningless.
In the image to the left you can see how we integrated this information into the user’s experience.
Each property on the platform has this score attributed to it, allowing us to predict relevant risk factors before we get boots on the ground. Saving time, money and getting help to those homes that most need it.
“How long will it take to set up?”
The second question is always one of practicality. There is no use producing intrusive wired technologies if it means, 1- installation costs are prohibitive, 2- the occupier’s space is intruded upon, 3- either of the former mean we don’t get meaningful coverage of the property.
With advancements in embedded technology we have been able to release two versions of our hardware over the two years. The most recent package and the one we are now shipping to new customers contains a single mobile LTE-based gateway and a set of completely wireless bluetooth sensing devices.
Both the gateway and the sensors are ready out-of-the-box, and require no configuration beyond placing them across the house and plugging in the gateway’s mains socket.
A long set up process benefits no one, our aim is to have a 15 minute turn-around time, from opening the box to seeing data in-app.
For individuals this means simplicity, and for institutions and surveyors this means less time (or no time) and less money spent needlessly attending properties.
“How can I make sense of this?”
A professional in this industry needs to have the ability to understand the story of a property often only through raw data and intuition. The problem we saw was that, 1- obtaining high quality data has historically been unnecessarily difficult, 2- the tools available to surveyors to effectively communicate the issues are far from adequate.
“Yes, the humidity may be low in this room, but that cold-bridge means guaranteed condensation, and if we spend an appreciable amount of time in these conditions I would not be surprised to see mould growing”.
Our aim is to remove these needless barriers to information making surveyors’ jobs harder, and keeping occupier’s in the dark.
Alongside my brother, a student of mathematics at the University of Leeds, Alex Carey and PhD researchers Abdelaziz Salama and Mohammed Hameed, we built a model which uses spatial analysis and machine learning techniques to generate highly accurate models of the properties on the platform.
Using this analysis, which we are able to perform in real-time, we accurately evaluate the performance of homes with regards to heat and moisture performance, and using these measures as the foundation, we are able to derive measures such as:
- Ventilation rates,
- Surface insulative measures (U-value, fRsi),
- Heat loss rates,
- Mould risk factors (risk of condensation, ambient risk).
Calculating these values is all well and good, but the real challenge is building the intuitive story. How do these factors relate? What do I need to pay attention to? How can I compare week to week, room to room, or property to property?
To this end we have built two tools.
The first, the interactive 3D models, offers an intuitive view of the property. See how moisture lingers in the unventilated bathroom after a shower for example, or how it diffuses throughout the house while the door is left open.
This tool distils the surveyor’s intuition into an easily-understood representation.
The second, our weekly condition reports, offers more information on 3 levels:
- The property score summarises the complete state of the property. How does it compare? How has it changed? Maybe you have just installed ventilation and want to see, in a single measure, how the change has impacted the property.
- The room score gives you a comparative measure for each of the rooms in the property. Where should I focus my attention to maximum return on investment?
- The metric and alerts will tell you specifically what needs improving within a room. Do you need to improve the ventilation, and by how much?
“What do I do about it?”
We’ve told you what the problem is, now let’s solve it. This is where all other technologies have fallen down. Offering the end-to-end solution requires working across the sector with organisations that offer a wide variety of support.
For diagnosis but also prescription we provide industry standard measures for insulation performance, ventilation rate and more. There is no reason that the information required to determine the necessary upgrades to insulation or ventilation should be gatekept.
Some of our customers have the facilities to organise their own remedial or support work, or they are using the platform to inform their investment into existing construction work. But for others, we partner with organisations in surveying, logistics and charity to get the necessary support and real-world results.
Our homes are complex, as are the remedies and solutions to their problems. Let’s spend more time building technology that addresses the problems at the root rather than reacting when it goes wrong.