As a designer or specifier you will set U value requirements for elements of your building in order to meet Building Regulations, ensure comfort and avoid condensation.
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When is a U value real?
1. When is a U value real?
As a designer or specifier you will set U value requirements for elements of your building in order to
meet Building Regulations, ensure comfort and avoid condensation.
Suppliers will offer products to comply with your specifications and quote a U value. But is it the real
U value?
There are too many people out there making claims based only on a centre panel U value, not a
whole product U value, but without making this clear. Whether this is done through ignorance or guile
is not always clear but the result certainly is youre not getting what you specified and paid for as the
centre panel U value is inevitably better than the whole product U value.
Calculations of thermal losses are difficult and complex. For a natural ventilator for instance, all
aspects of the ventilator construction the lid, frame, base, etc have to be taken into account and
these are likely to have a complex construction. But that is no excuse for providing misleading data.
Generally if a U value looks too good to be true it probably is.
How do you avoid this? Well firstly a tight specification is helpful, detailing that U values must be whole
product and based either on calculation as required in Building Regulations or upon test. Secondly
question any suspicious U values. A couple of simple questions are usually enough.
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