How Together Housing Made Innovation ‘Business-as-Usual’

AirEx and Together Housing

When you manage over 38,000 homes across Yorkshire and Lancashire, you learn to look beyond quick fixes, says Gemma Voaden, Senior Manager, Net Zero at Together Housing. Delivering retrofit at scale isn’t just about hitting EPC targets, it’s about finding smarter ways to improve comfort, health and energy efficiency for every resident, in every home.

Over the past two years, Together Housing has transformed how it tackles heat loss in older homes. It started with a problem. And like most good stories, it led to a solution that now underpins their entire approach.

The Problem Beneath Our Feet

Many of Together Housing’s properties are typical of social housing stock across the UK: older, solid wall homes with suspended timber floors. These floors might seem unremarkable, but they’re a key source of heat loss and one of the trickiest areas to treat.

Underfloor insulation was the obvious answer. But in practice, it wasn’t always feasible. Some voids were too shallow. Some tenants didn’t want the disruption. And even when it could be installed, the organisation wanted a way to monitor performance and check the floor void stayed healthy.

Together Housing needed a smarter solution; something simple, reliable, and connected.

A New Kind of Air Brick

This is where AirEx came in. Floorvent, AirEx’s smart air brick, replaces traditional passive vents and reduces heat loss while maintaining healthy airflow. It’s installed from outside the property, so there’s minimal disruption to residents. And crucially, it connects to the cloud, feeding back real-time data on temperature, humidity and void conditions.

At first, Together Housing trialled the technology. Could this low-profile solution really make a difference? It didn’t take long to find out.

From Trial to Transformation

“The wonderful thing about innovation,” says Gemma, “is that when it works, it becomes business as usual.”

And that’s exactly what happened. After the first phase of installs showed measurable improvements in heat retention and comfort, Together Housing began integrating Floorvent into its broader retrofit strategy. It became a core part of their “light retrofit” approach, used where underfloor insulation couldn’t be installed.

Today, over 500 homes in the Together Housing portfolio already benefit from AirEx. Installations are delivered by trusted installer partners, who play a critical role in Together Housing’s retrofit supply chain. These experienced teams help ensure installations are carried out to a high standard with minimal disruption for residents.

Connected Retrofit, Backed by Data

Together Housing is committed to measuring what works, not just installing and hoping for the best. They already capture data from homes to understand building health, and build the evidence base for future retrofit strategies. 

The data and insights from Floorvent devices can add to this picture to help monitor the health of homes and validate performance. That data does more than prove compliance, it supports better decision-making and it helps build the business case for future funding. And most importantly, it helps Together Housing understand what’s really working for their residents.

“We’re collecting before-and-after data now,” says Gemma. “That gives us the evidence we need to show what’s worked and where we’ve improved comfort and cut energy use. It’s also how we make sure we’re doing the right thing for the right home.”

Lessons in Long-Term Thinking

What makes Together Housing’s approach so powerful isn’t just the adoption of new technology, it’s how they’ve brought everyone along with them.

Maintenance teams are trained to support and service the new assets. Installers are part of long-term project teams. Residents are involved through engagement groups, giving feedback on their experience. And data analysts work side-by-side with operational leads to interpret the results.

It’s a joined-up, people-first approach to retrofit that puts long-term outcomes at the centre.

What’s Next

With thousands more properties in scope, and a pending bid for SH Wave 3, Together Housing shows no signs of slowing down.

For both organisations, the focus now is on deepening the partnership and extending what they’ve already proven: that simple, clever solutions, deployed strategically, can make homes warmer, healthier, and easier to manage.

“It’s not just about EPCs – it’s about comfort, health and resilience. AirEx helps us deliver that.”
— Gemma Voaden, Together Housing