Applicable Prescriptive Measures

As outlined in the Section 63 Guide for Building Owners (S63-001), the Section 63 assessment uses seven prescriptive improvement measures for the building. These are:

1. Adding central time heating controls to the HVAC system. If there is an incomplete set of heating controls present in the building, improvement by the ‘central time heating control’ measure resulting in a 1% improvement in current heating efficiency.

2. Upgrading lighting controls to use local manual and photoelectric (PE) switching. If there are no additional lighting controls present in the building, improvement by installation of a ‘lighting controls’ measure using local manual switching (where supported) and photoelectric switching (for spaces that receive direct daylight.

3. Draught-stripping for windows and doors. If the current building is reported as having an air infiltration rate greater than 14 m³/h/m², a reduction in heat loss from infiltration will be assigned by reducing the current stated infiltration rate by 10%.

4. Adding insulation to the hot water storage cylinder. If a hot water tank is present without insulation, improvement is based upon installation of an 80mm insulation jacket to reduce standing heat loss.

5. Replacing incandescent lamps with compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). If incandescent lamps are in use within the building, improvement by a ‘lamp replacement’ measure based upon installation of compact fluorescent lamps in all such zones of the building.

6. Replacing the boiler if it is more than 15 years old. Conditional on the boiler to be replaced being more than 15 years old. Improvement by boiler replacement will be modelled, based upon a boiler using the same fuel but with an efficiency equal to the minimum value set out in current building regulations.

7. Improved insulation of any accessible roof spaces (i.e. lofts). If any area of roof is poorly insulated, with a U-value of 1.0 W/m2K or higher and the roof space is accessible, improvement by installation of additional insulation to improve the U-value of any such areas to 0.15 W/m²K.

The applicability of these measures to your building model will be determined automatically, based upon the settings used in the spaces, Apache Systems and constructions within the model (details on the triggers within the model for each of the measures are given in Appendix B: Automatic Triggers for Prescriptive Measures ).

You can view which of the seven measures is applicable to your building using the Prescriptive Measures tab in Building & System Data:

The tab includes a “triggered” checkbox for each of the prescriptive improvement measures listed previously – each is labelled with an abbreviated version of the measure. When a checkbox is ticked, the associated measure has been identified as being applicable to your building model and will be included when performing the Section 63 assessment to calculate the target annual savings for CO₂ emissions and energy usage. Note that you cannot manually change the ticked state of these checkboxes – it is derived from the settings in the building model.

If none of the checkboxes are ticked, this means that none of the prescriptive improvement measures are applicable to the building. In this situation, the generated Action Plan will have no improvement targets (i.e. the target annual savings for both CO₂ and energy will be zero).

Click OK to close Building & System Data and proceed to generating the initial Action Plan.

IMPORTANT: As the identification of which measures are applicable is based upon the settings within the model that represent the physical building, you MUST NOT make any changes to the model in the prescribed measures – its state must match that used to generate the EPC.