Industry statement on UK test standard for Heat Interface Units

The Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) published the UK test standard for Heat Interface Units (HIU) in 2017, a concept which industry initially welcomed, due to a growing concern about a lack of overarching standards for these units and frequent misunderstandings on how they should be sized and specified.

However, the current published test specification does not fulfil the aim of being an overarching standard that allows all HIUs to be tested. The BESA standard only allows for one specific type of HIU, suitable for small apartment type installations, which is excluding all other variants from being tested. The HIU industry is concerned that this is leading to an unfair distortion in the market.

UK HIU manufacturers would therefore like to clarify that the BESA standard is not a unifying test specification and specifiers and architects are advised not to utilise it for that purpose. HIU manufacturers can provide further detailed advice on specifying units.

EUA has developed a number of changes it would like to see to the specification, in order to make it fairer and representative of the market. We hope to beable to work with BESA in order to develop an overarching standard for HIUs in the UK and to continue to develop this important sector.