The Home Starter Guide (HSG) is a great, simple and effective quick reference guide for a tenant or owner for their home. Unique to the property, it stays with the property for life.
Why a Home Starter Guide?
Research highlights that people often complain that manuals are too complicated and detailed and would rather a quick start guide and that these should either be available on-line or in video format. Further evidence shows that manuals are lost or misplaced and so do not get passed on with the property. The problem being that new occupants have to manage the home without any guides. To compound the problem some manuals are not always available for the life of the property or for the systems used within the home. NHBC Foundation produced a great research paper into how people interact with their homes highlighting these common problems.
User guides are recommended in the Code for Sustainable Homes (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2010b) and are included in Category 8: Management.
The aim of including user guides in the Code is to promote the provision of guidance enabling occupants to understand and operate their home efficiently and make the best use of local facilities.
This guide is also produced to meet the aspect of optimising the performance within Section 7: Sustainability of the Scottish Building Standards Technical Handbooks.
