What is the Future Homes Standard 2025?

25% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions come from heating and power for buildings. So, to address this, the Future Homes Standard (FHS) will become mandatory in 2025.

New homes built from 2025 onwards will produce 75%-80% less carbon emissions than homes built under the current Building Regulations. New homes will be better insulated with more efficient heating and hot water systems. As a result, they will be more comfortable, cheaper to heat, and contribute less to climate change.

So, what does it mean for housebuilders?

Housebuilders will notice significant changes to architect details and specified materials. With only two years until the FHS becomes mandatory, there may be a stampede to get projects through on the cheap side of the line, but housebuilding is heading for a serious quality upgrade.

Low-carbon heating and power

We’ll see tech specialists stepping up with low-carbon heating and renewable energy systems, which have been coming through more gradually over the last ten years, including heat pumps, infrared heating panels, solar panels with batteries, and solar thermal along with increasing demand for car-charging infrastructure and SMART house controls. Most of the kit is becoming increasingly familiar, but the FHS presents a massive opportunity for power and heating contractors and manufacturers.

Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) has been synonymous with Passive House standards in the housing sector. As airtightness improves drastically, all eyes turn to heating system efficiency and indoor air quality. MVHR has remained niche to date, typified by M&E contractors who quoted on them but only ever installed one or two. This is about to change.

Windows and doors

Triple-glazed windows and highly insulated doors have been high-spec and high-cost options until now. Still, the FHS will encourage manufacturers to compete on price, and housebuilders will need to upskill on their installation and use. As a result, we will see new market entrants. Still, every manufacturer in the windows and doors market will already prepare their bottom-end and mid-range options to capture the market as the FHS wave approaches.

Tapes and airtightness

Airtightness is critical to reducing heat loss by reducing air movement through construction layers. There are already plenty of whole construction systems on the market that address this, including close-fitting boarding, and airtightness tape, the price of which is eye-watering to any self-builder.

Building tapes and other airtightness kit have been high-end niches until recently, but housebuilders will need to get to grips with these materials to install them correctly and efficiently. Taping and other details can add significant time to a house build. However, manufacturers of insulation and boards for airtightness systems have been competing to make installation faster and more failsafe for a few years.

Keeping the heat in

There will be more insulation and more specific insulation detailing. While all housebuilders are now familiar with a standard range of insulation products for walls, roofs, and ceilings, we’ll see more attention to insulation detailing at element joins and under groundfloors.

It remains to be seen whether inspection requirements will be tightened to ensure effective deployment. This could include airtightness testing, currently used to test whether PassiveHouse homes achieve the required maximum air leakage.

The introduction of increased testing would represent an opportunity for equipment manufacturers and service providers to increase sales and/or service portfolio.

Low-carbon materials

FHS emphasizes buildings’ operational emissions (or ‘in-use emissions’), by which we mean the emissions caused by heating and energy consumption while the building is in use. This is because, over the lifetime of the building, the majority of the emissions associated with that building will be while it is in use rather than the embodied emissions incurred during construction and disposal.

Embodied carbon relates predominantly to the choice of construction materials and construction methods. For example, steel is a very high-carbon material, but it is recyclable or even reusable and highly durable; anything with cement is high carbon and recyclable only as aggregate, and locally grown timbers would be very low carbon but may rot or become infested if they become damp.

In recent years there has been a resurgence in the certification and specification of ‘traditional’ or ‘natural’ materials such as sheep’s wool, wood fibre, cork, hemp (insulation), and lime (plaster, mortar, paint).

FHS will encourage the growing innovation of materials from industrial waste streams, such as glass foam and PET insulation roll.

The recycled content of the most common construction materials, such as cement, and construction plastics, is rising, driven by legislation, increasing reputational sensitivity throughout the supply chain, and innovative business models with new technology. An example of this is the use of captured carbon dioxide in carbonised concrete, which traps CO2 away for the long term while improving concrete’s comprehensive strength.

Challenges

Significant challenges will be as the wave breaks over the housebuilding industry in 2025, particularly with financing and material supply. Finance will be stressed on the materials side from manufacturers to homebuyers due to the cost uplift in materials. Construction services and labor should not be affected. However, housebuilders are advised to lock in service providers in case of the extraordinary demand for technical expertise relating to MVHR and other technologies.

Opportunities

Contractors stand to benefit from a flurry of manufacturers offering free training on their products, but more broadly, opportunities to diversify their service portfolio for clients. M&E contractors are an obvious example of this, with manufacturers pushing their products, including new market entrants.

Prefabrication and modular construction presents a massive opportunity to housebuilders, because it addresses cost sensitivity and quality sensitivity, that will come with the enhanced requirements of FHS for more insulation and better insulation detailing. Off-site house pre-fabrication has been steadily gaining traction, with the kit homes industry maturing at a pace particularly in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania for export across Europe and the UK- go on holiday and visit some factories. Off-site timber frame fabrication lends itself to material efficiency, quality control, and reduced weather delays and damage. There are opportunities for housebuilders to set up prefabrication factories, or incorporated prefabricated or kit frames for additional capacity, as long as the supplier is able to deliver the houses on time at the required volume- they will be scrambling for extra capacity themselves, and there’ll be new players in the UK market

Ready, position, impact

General housebuilders can upskill as experts on FHS specifically or more broadly on sustainability and compliance themes. But, as ever, many in the industry will drag their feet and feel the pain of struggling to keep up. But, while they’re busy moaning over a cuppa, their competitors will nimbly offer their expertise to support clients in compliance and market positioning.

It’s a shake-up, we’ve all been given fair warning, and it’s there for the taking if you consider the role you want your company to play and what your target customers will need. It’s a massive opportunity for housebuilders to pivot their company in a new direction.

The dust will settle, and the hot opportunity will subside over a few years, and before we know it, FHS2025 will be a thing of the past. So get on the front foot to be an industry leader and in demand as an industry authority and a safe pair of hands.

*Looking for trade support to achieve the future homes standard or assistance with decarbonisation property works, call us on 01922 322 024 or visit our property services homepage.