Buying Advice: Setting High Standards

Rising Energy Costs

By 1999, rising energy costs also led to a standard introduced for holiday homes. Here we look at both standards and what they mean to prospective purchasers. We also look at the National Caravan Council's (NCC) energy efficiency rating schemes which give you a good idea of how one holiday home performs against another, and how residential park homes perform.

The BS3632 standard covers all residential park homes, and often covers products referred to as lodges. ('Lodge' is actually a marketing term usually used to denote a style – for example, clad in wood, and open-plan in layout. 'Lodge' can therefore also be used for a caravan holiday home in that style).

By definition, residential park homes are intended for year-round occupation. BS 3632 defines the minimum specifications for many items, including ventilation, thermal and acoustic insulation, vapour control, extraction, structural stability, and so on. It even covers stability during transportation.

Also, covered are areas like electrical services and heating installations (both solid fuel and alternative energy sources), water supply, drainage, fire-escape routes, doors, windows, cooking appliances and even handbooks. The idea is to ensure the homes are safe and sensible to use for their intended purpose. The current version of BS 3632 is dated November 2015 and takes into account increases in required energy efficiency as well as improvements in technology.

The bottom line is that today's residential park homes are better built and better insulated than ever before. Consequently, they can cost less to run and are more comfortable to live in. It also means they could last longer, with a lifespan of 30, 40 or even 60 years, when properly maintained.

What about Holiday Homes?

Holiday homes are by definition designed to be occupied for part of the year; many parks have a closure period in the coldest months of the winter. This means they do not need the same standards of insulation as residential park homes. (In practice, though, many holiday homes are built to residential standards, respecting the fact that some parks are open all year.)

Holiday homes are covered by a different standard - BS EN 1647. First published in 1999, the standard has since been updated three times to account for changes in technology and increasing energy prices.

The current version of the standard dates from 2012. It covers fewer areas than BS 3632 and, as you might expect, the requirements are less stringent. This is because it's important for holiday homes to be as affordable as possible and that means tailoring the build specification accordingly.

For example, levels of insulation, both thermal and acoustic need, in theory, only be sufficient for holiday requirements during the warmer months.

Of course there's nothing to stop a manufacturer building holiday or residential park homes to higher specifications than are laid down in the standards and indeed many do. For example, all Pemberton's products come with 250mm roof insulation – more than is needed to meet either standard. Another example is Tingdene, which builds all its holiday lodges to BS 3632.

Where high levels of insulation are not standard, it is sometimes possible to pay extra for an upgrade that will boost the thermal performance. ABI and Atlas, for instance, allow buyers to upgrade some of their holiday homes to residential park home standard when they place the order.

Carnaby stays with BS EN 1647 but offers an Ultra Warm Plus pack that takes the structural thermal rating up to 9.1 out of 10 on some of its caravan holiday homes.

The following table illustrates a typical thermal comparison between the two standards. The insulation material is based on glass wool. Other materials may result in different thicknesses being used. What matters is the thermal performance.

Swift, for example, meets the EN 1647 standard using a bonded wall construction borrowed from touring caravan and motorhome production. This combines good strength with good insulation.

Ensuring Compliance

Compliance with these standards is monitored by the NCC (National Caravan Council). They work with many partners including BSI, European Standards organisations, the Health & Safety Executive, Gas Safe and Fire Inspectorate to ensure the industry's products comply and are safe.

The NCC Product Approval teams examine a whole raft of factors to ensure the relevant standards are met. Every manufacturer (in the case of residential park homes) or manufacturer's model (in the case of holiday homes) approved is licensed to display an NCC Approved Badge and each home has an NCC approval certificate.

The team also assess the energy efficiency of each model and awards a rating accordingly.

NCC Energy Efficiency Rating Schemes

If you're in the market for a residential park home or holiday home, it's useful to know how one model compares with another from an energy efficiency view. To help you, the NCC has produced two thermal rating schemes, one for residential park homes and the other for holiday homes.

NCC Residential Park Home Energy Efficiency Rating Scheme

The scheme takes into consideration the insulation qualities of the fabric of the home and the amount of energy required to heat the air passing through it. Also, included are the efficiency of the central heating and water heating equipment and the energy consumed by the fixed lighting.

Using typical weather data, the calculator generates a rating label that gives an indication of the total energy consumption across 12 months of residential occupancy. In common with other energy efficiency rating scales, the most efficient homes are those with a rating at the green end of the scale whilst the least efficient have a rating in the red zone.

The ratings are based on the calculated energy consumption per square metre of floor area. An estimate of the carbon dioxide emissions per square metre of floor area is also provided.

	Minimum Insulation Thickness
	BS EN 1647	BS 3632
Doors	37mm averaged, across all, components	26 mm
Windows		28 mm
Walls		126 mm
Floor		126 mm
Roof		220 mm

Homes with features like gas central heating are likely to have a higher rating than equivalent electrically heated ones because of the additional losses incurred by centrally generated and distributed electricity.

NCC Holiday Home Thermal Rating Scheme

The scheme is like that for residential park homes but simply looks at the likely heat losses that will be incurred through the fabric of the home. In doing so, it assumes the home isn't used during the coldest part of the year, i.e. from the beginning of December until the end of February.

The rating is based on the calculated seasonal heating load per square metre of floor area. A score of between 1 and 10 is awarded to each home based upon its thermal rating. The higher the number, the better from an insulation view.

To distinguish the rating from that for residential park homes built to BS3632, the scheme uses a horseshoe-shape to depict the result. This makes it easy to tell at a glance to which standard a home has been built.

Thermal rating labels for both schemes should be prominently displayed in the front windows of each home at shows and showgrounds until the home is sold. A copy of the rating label should also be included in the home's information pack along with the NCC scheme approval certificate.

Size matters!

Beware that, under these schemes, homes with large floor areas score more highly than those of identical construction with smaller footprints. This is because they have proportionally less wall area (to lose heat) per square metre of floor space. Care should therefore be taken to only directly compare homes of similar sizes.

Climate chamber testing

Today it's commonplace to subject touring caravans and motorhomes to full climate chamber testing. Park and holiday homes, however, are a different kettle of fish, not least because of their sheer size.

As implied, the energy ratings of the NCC's schemes are arrived by calculation and there's nothing wrong with that. Swift, however, goes a step further by testing its holiday homes in an environmental chamber. This helps them to optimise the heating and ventilation as well as to measure the thermal performance.

Conclusion

Residential park and caravan holiday homes have come a long way from their humble beginnings in the 1960s. Today's units provide all the comforts of a modern home. The two British standards, combined with the NCC's energy efficiency rating schemes, enable you to buy with confidence that the product will perform well for its intended use.

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