First affordable housing Passivhaus development for the South East
Housing Association Saxon Weald has completed a new £4.7 million eco-home development in Horsham, West Sussex that will become the first affordable housing development in the South East to be built to the Passivhaus principle.
Family-owned construction, civil engineering and property services firm Osborne is the contractor and Innovaré Systems is supplying the i-SIPs panels that will help the properties meet the high standards of sustainability required.
Standings Court is a mix of 38 houses and apartments featuring 12 Passivhaus homes and a further 26 homes that will meet Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5. Saxon Weald has set aside five of these homes for adults with learning disabilities and one apartment for an on-site carer to enable individuals with learning difficulties and other needs to live independently in a mixed community.
Key principles of the development include:
- Good solar orientation, optimising solar gain to provide free heating
- Increased insulation within walls, floors and roofs
- Solar hot water units on the roofs of Passivhaus homes
- Photovoltaic roof panels on Code 5 homes
- Windows and doors triple-glazed
- Heat recovery and ventilation units in the most efficient homes
- Ample vegetation and planting around the site
- Low energy light bulbs fitted throughout
- Reduced water consumption
- Resident cycle storage and parking area
All the homes have been constructed using Innovaré Systems’ Structured Insulated Panels system (i-SIPs), developed to respond to Passivhaus air permeability requirements of 0.6m3/m2/hr at 50pa as well as providing U values at 0.10 Wk/m2K with minimal cold bridging.
Pete Blunt, Managing Director of Innovaré Systems, said: “This is the first time that our i-SIPS panels have been used in the construction of homes certified to this standard and by providing large format panels to exacting tolerances of /-2mm that could be quickly assembled on site we have been able to help Saxon Weald deliver high quality affordable housing that helps their residents reduce their heating costs.”
Paul Ensch, Director of Osborne’s Homes team, said: “This scheme is an exemplar in sustainable, affordable housing development that brings the world’s leading standard in energy efficient homes to people who will benefit from it the most. We have demonstrated here that it is possible to build homes of this standard on a large scale and to a tight budget and hope that this will help more housing associations meet higher sustainability targets while also fulfilling demand from residents for new homes.”
Saxon Weald will be using this development to test and compare performance factors of the two low carbon building standards used. The information will be collected for two years, at which point Saxon Weald hope to arrive at a preferred standard for future homes.
