Moisture-related Risks of Insulated Lime Finishes - Literature Review and Gap Analysis - AWARD

Historic England is an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. We are the Government's advisor on the historic environment. Our purpose is to improve people's lives by championing and protecting the historic environment. Through our work, collaboration, creativity and expertise we want everyone to be able to connect with and learn from our heritage.

Climate change is one of the most challenging issues of our time, with potential negative consequences for both people and heritage. This project will assist Historic England showing how heritage can play an important role in improving energy efficiency through mitigation measures. This project will assist Historic England in planning future activity around commitments within our Corporate Plan and the Government's third National Adaptation Programme.

The Historic Building Climate Change Adaptation Team initiated a research programme on Insulated Lime Finishes in 2022. The overall programme seeks to understand the performance of insulated lime finishes (plasters and renders) both in terms of moisture transport and heat transfer. It also seeks to ascertain whether they are an appropriate energy efficiency measure for use on buildings of traditional construction from a material compatibility point of view. Their potential impact on the heritage significance of the building are outside of the scope of the overarching research programme.

The research programme was structured in different phases from its inception, looking at short, medium- and long-term studies. Two phases have already been completed (see section 3. Background).

The current research proposal builds on the findings of those previous phases, but focusses on understanding whether research has been undertaken looking at moisture-related risks of insulated lime finishes (i.e. moisture accumulation and/or drying capacity reduction), and how such risks can potentially increase rather than reduce the thermal conductivity of the envelope and/or accelerate the degradation / reduce the longevity of the insulated lime finish.

The Literature Review and Gap Analysis produced with this research project will:

• oProduce a spreadsheet (or similar formatted document) collating information from research papers on mixing components as well as mixing methods, substrates, hygrothermal properties of the mixes and moisture-related risks identified.
• oProduce a report in Historic England's format for publication in our Research Report Series. The document will include an Executive Summary and all assimilated information appended and conclude with a succinct summary of identified critical 'next steps' (e.g. further literature review, case study(ies) and/or research to address aforementioned knowledge gaps).
• oDeliver results to the Historic England team and, on agreement, co-host a Technical Tuesday webinar.
• oHighlight future research needs, particularly if feeding in...