Plus Dane Housing has appointed Q-Bot to upgrade its housing stock and use its robots to install underfloor insulation over the next two years. The contract is also the first to be done through Procurement for Housing’s ‘social housing emerging disruptors’ framework.
The large retrofit programme aims to improve the energy efficiency of at least 200 properties to achieve EPC-C by 2030. To start the project, Plus Dane identified 50 of its properties around Cheshire, mostly pre-1930s, semi-detached housing with suspended timber floors making them ideal for Q-Bot to insulate via its autonomous robots.
Q-Bot’s method of installing underfloor insulation is an innovative, minimally disruptive approach. More than 10 million homes in the UK have suspended timber flooring and very few have been insulated because of the disruption and cost of doing so. Controlled remotely, the Q-Bot robot is inserted into the underfloor void, sprays insulation to the underside of the suspended floors and then verifies that the work has been completed correctly.
