INCA Case Study: Tai Tarian EWI Programme 2022

Tai Tarian has a stock of tens of thousands of homes across South Wales. These homes include many construction types, including traditional cavity wall, solid wall, and the more unusual and technically challenging Non-Traditional property types (non-trads). These Non-Trads encompassed a vast range and included:

• Rofton
• Arcal
• Airey
• Wimpey No-Fines
• Cornish

Sika has worked closely with Tai Tarian, upgrading several hundred of their homes throughout 2022. A highly ambitious EWI programme has transformed a large number of these homes to thermal performance levels far surpassing those typically seen.

Throughout 2022 and into early 2023 the thermal performance of these homes was increased from starting u-values in the region of:

• 1.64W/m² to 0.50W/m²K

With the Sika Parextherm EWI systems improving the thermal performance of the homes and the final u-value to ranges from:

• 0.30W/m²K to 0.14W/m²K

The Sika Parextherm EWI systems utilised across the housing stock comprised of Mineral Wool, Phenolic, and Grey EPS. The EWI systems were finished with dry dash and siloxane render. A number of homes also incorporated brick slips to introduce a design variance in the overall aesthetic of the facades, forming solider courses beneath windows.

Tai Tarian wished to take the opportunity of their 2022 EWI programme to turn some of their vacant properties into highly energy-efficient ones. These were known as Green Voids. As part of this package of works, Sika worked with Tai Tarian to ensure that the u-values of these homes were improved as much as possible to u-values of 0.14W/m²K and 0.18W/m²K. Along with incorporating other measures to reduce the carbon footprint and subsequently the energy costs of these homes. These measures include the installation of Solar Thermal, Air Source Heat Pumps, and Solar Photovoltaic systems.

Numerous considerations were taken into account during the extensive and highly varied EWI programme. This included ensuring the EWI systems were suitable for the different property types, and that the technical challenges of installing on to difficult construction types were overcome with appropriate and sympathetic designs.

The finished result has provided Tai Tarian residents with much warmer homes, which cost less to heat, and the overall aesthetic appearance has been greatly improved.

Tai Tarian has said, “Sika has been our go-to EWI system provider for over 10 years having been utilised on thousands of properties of all different archetypes, the products, and the technical support services have always been second to none”.