Green Credentials and Whole Life Costing
Energy efficiency is an integral part of our design considerations from the outset.
The Government have set challenging targets of new houses to be increasingly efficient, ultimately being ‘Carbon Neutral’.
This requires a combination of both energy conservation and renewable sources to be effective. We have substantial experience that can be applied to your project.
Energy Conservation
Usually a combination of passive and active mechanisms provides the best solutions, these include:
·Super-efficient insulation used in the building fabric.
·Maximising natural daylight.
· Minimising the use of fossil fuels.
·Using electricity as efficiently as possible.
·Sealing building elements to minimise the ‘leakage’ of heat.
·Integrated ventilation and heat recovery systems to ensure that the heat is ‘recycled’.
·Reduce the glazing on north facing elevations.
Whole Life Costing
This naturally follows most discussions about energy conservation and the use of renewables in combination with new construction or refurbishment.
The building design and integration of the best passive conservation measures, where these are integral to the structure, are the most important elements to get right. These are the least likely to be ‘upgraded’ by anything other than major alteration to the building in the future. It is vital that good design is at the core of the project. The value of good design has been confirmed by the Office of Government Commerce – “money spent on good design can be saved many times over in the construction and maintenance costs”. This concept is widely described as the 1:5:20 rule that shows that for every additional £1 spent on design and £5 on construction, £200 can be saved over the lifetime of a building during occupation. ‘Achieving Excellent in Construction Procurement Guide’.
·Orientate the building to maximise passive solar energy and also improve the efficiency of active renewable systems.
·Incorporate solar panels or tubes for water heating or photo-voltaics for electricity.
·In place of conventional boilers, consider using heat recovery units linked to ground water or air sources – these can be used to supply low-temperature underfloor, radiator or air heating systems.
·Bio-fuel boilers using wood pellet or chips (or even logs or straw bales) can provide carbon neutral heat.
·Wind turbines – if the site is open to the prevailing winds this can be a viable energy source – but as wind rarely blows constantly it would need to be used in combination with other power sources.
·Water turbines – potentially a very useful source of small scale power where a site adjoins a stream with a suitable head and volume of water flowing.
Sustainable Contemporary House
Our design of the 'Sustainable Contemporary House' is designed to the Passivhaus principle of 'fabric first' with super insulated walls. Exceptional levels of insulation mean that it has no primary heating relying only on a wood burning stove for exceptionally cold weather and a micro heat recovery ventilation system that heats incoming fresh air with the energy from stale air heated only by the activities of occupying the house - cooking, heating water, showers etc.
Winner of a Salisbury Civic Society New Buildings Award 2011 and it also featured on BBC1's 'To Build or Not to Build' on the 7th September 2011.
Eco House
Eco design does not have to look Eco.
Our 'Classic Contemporary House' is designed for low energy consumption with heating from a renewable energy system - using a ground source heat pump. |
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