Passivhaus Scheme
Tipton, West Midlands
We were pleased to work on this award-winning
domestic new build project alongside Exeter
City Council, PRS Group and Gale & Snowden.
Gale & Snowden Architects specified our Basic 1 external wall
insulation system with 250mm grey expanded polystyrene for the
construction of 14 Passivhaus units in Exeter. The developments
of Brookway and Bennett Square are the council’s second
programme of council-owned builds in Exeter and form part of
an on-going strategy to build more council homes to address fuel
poverty in the region.
The buildings were designed with a fabric-first approach, whilst
also addressing the issue of fuel poverty and the need to ensure
the resident’s fuel bills would be kept to a minimum. The aim is to
reduce the energy demand of a building by up to 90% of that of a
standard UK building, without compromising on comfort or indoor
air quality.
Our design focussed on a fabricfirst and optimal orientation approach to first minimise the energy demand of the building, reducing its carbon emissions, before adding renewables where appropriate. It tackles both a changing climate and fuel poverty.
This is typically achieved through high levels of insulation,
exceptional air tightness, high-performance windows and
doors and highly efficient mechanical ventilation heat
recovery.
The Basic 1 system for this particular project incorporated
250mm of grey expanded polystyrene above the DPC and
250mm extruded polystyrene below the DPC and was
installed to the exterior of the medium density blockwork
construction. A Silitect top coat was used to complete the
installation and finished in three shades of red on some
properties and cream on the others, making for a striking
visual appearance of the blocks as a whole.
