Welcome to BRE XCC

BRE Excess Cold Calculator


This website provides support for the use of a tool designed to assist Environmental Health Practitioners and Technical Officers in the assessment of the hazard of Excess Cold in UK dwellings. When provided with details about the dwelling and its occupants the Calculator provides an estimate of the likely running costs and an assessment of the adequacy of the heating system provided. The tool can then be re-run with modifications to test scenarios for possible improvement measures, such as packages of insulation and heating system improvements, in order to consider suitable remedial action and to assist in the calculation of its cost-effectiveness. This information will be useful as supporting evidence for Officers' decisions on the presence of Excess Cold hazards and in justifying any requirement for mitigation measures.

The Excess Cold Calculator was created by BRE with support and advice from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, who advised that its members would find it helpful if we could supply a tool to provide supporting evidence for their decisions. The heating cost and adequacy calculations used by the tool are underpinned by BRE's long experience of measuring and modelling the energy consumption of buildings to support government programmes and for industry. The Excess Cold Calculator was designed to provide reliable estimates of running costs and heating adequacy based on a relatively small number of inputs in order to limit the time and effort required to collect dwelling data. The result is a tool that is considerably quicker and easier to use than most energy modelling software and focussed specifically on the assessment of an Excess Cold hazard.

To start using the tool, please log in to read the user guide from the download section and then add dwellings to assess.

Sign up now to BRE's XCC!

If you have already registered, please log in to access your account.

Otherwise, in order to use the Excess Cold Calculator users must be registered. To begin the registration process please click here.

If you have any difficulty with the registration process please click here for help. If you have any more general questions about the Excess Cold Calculator please visit the Frequently Asked Questions page in the first instance, or click on the 'Contact us' link at the top of this page if your question is not already answered.