Specifying thermally broken steel lintels for residential construction

The Fabric Energy Efficiency Standard (FEES) forms the foundations of the Building Regulations Part L 2013.

This focuses on the thermal performance for walls, roof and floors of the building, which have been continually improved with the revisions to the regulations. Improving the thermal performance of the walls emphasises the increasing proportion of heat lost through thermal bridges in the building fabric such as lintels if these details are not improved. The heat lost through linear thermal bridges in called the Psi value and is measured in W/mK.

This White paper details how replacing the traditional steel lintels with Catnic Thermally Broken Lintel, the heat loss through the window head detail can be reduced by up to 96%.

On a typical 4 bedroom house with 1200 square feet, the heat loss through a standard lintel can account for about 6%* of the overall heat loss through the fabric of the house. Using a Catnic Thermally broken Lintel reduces this to 0.25% making it effectively insignificant.

*based on a default lintel psi value of 0.5 W/mK