G&S Passivhaus Council Homes Come Runners Up in Sustainable Project Award

We are pleased to announce that Gale & Snowden's Passivhaus Council Homes in Exeter for Exeter City Council came runners up at the Michelmores Property Awards 2016 last night under the ‘Sustainable Project of the Year' category. 

The Passivhaus Council homes, which have been built on land owned by Exeter City Council: 

• Are built to Passivhaus standards which helps to tackle climate change and defeat fuel poverty by reducing carbon emissions and running costs by 70-90% compared to typical council housing which makes up the majority of Exeter City Council’s existing stock.
• Provide exemplar living conditions with the specification of healthy building materials based on Building Biology principles.
• Include ecological landscape design strategies based on Permaculture principles.
• Are future-climate-ready having been designed to meet predicted climate change into 2080. 

By repairing and reusing these brownfield sites to create new communities, establish a sense of place, and significantly reduce running costs for tenants, helping to defeat fuel poverty, these Council houses lead the way for truly sustainable housing in our cities.

More information about these ground breaking projects can be found on the Brookway/Silverberry Close and Bennett Square/Barberry Close pages on our website. 

We would like to thank Exeter City Council for their vision in commissioning this project and for their ongoing commitment to procuring high quality, low energy, healthy homes and buildings throughout Exeter. 

Our thanks extend to Interserve Construction as main contractor and for nominating the project for this award, and to StructureHaus who provided full structural and civil engineering services. 

We would like to congratulate Grenadier Estates who were the winners of the 'Sustainable Project of the Year’ award with their Atlantic View holiday lodges in Cornwall.

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Visit our website to read more about Passivhaus and energy-efficient design. Gale & Snowden is registered with the Passivhaus Institute in Germany as a Certified Designer, as well as being a member of the Passivhaus Trust in the UK. Gale & Snowden also offer a Passivhaus design consultancy service, with more information available here.

Follow us on twitter for the latest updates @galeandsnowden

Sherwoods Passivhaus low energy engineering review on site

We recently visited one of our Passivhaus schemes to review how the build was coming along on site and also inspect the M&E systems prior to cover up.  The scheme, called Sherwoods, has benefited greatly from our integrated design approach.  For this scheme we were able to bring all our design disciplines together in an integrated way - architecture, Passivhaus design, healthy building design, low energy engineering and permaculture.    

Sherwoods under construction

On the M&E side of things the aim was to integrate small and simple systems within the Passivhaus design and to do so following healthy building design principles.

Designing in small and elegant heating solutions for homes that do not require much heat can be challenging.  Most systems on the market such as biomass and heat pumps systems linking into underfloor heating are simply too costly and too over engineered in a Passivhaus.  The right balance we found with this scheme was a small log burner, which will be inset into masonry, with back boiler feeding into a thermal store.  The thermal store was sized appropriately to match the back boiler output and serves the clients hot water and small heating need without being over engineered.  Back up is via electric immersion which is modulated in output to suit the electrical load being generated by the PV array on the roof.  We then arrived at a rather elegant, simple and small wall heating solution in some of the perimeter rooms which is fed from the thermal store.  Wall heating systems are considered even more effective than underfloor heating at delivering comfortable and radiant heat and they can be down-sized to suit the heat loss requirements for each room, hence can be compact and small.  Underfloor heating typically fills the whole floor which becomes a costly system in a home that does not need much heat.   

Wall heating system

Thermal store installation

We also designed the mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) system where we are distributing air via a radial ductwork system to floor and wall grilles.  The idea here being to provide optimum routing of air from low level to high improving the overall comfort experience.  Incoming fresh air is via an earth tube primarily because the house is built into the earth. 

Supply & Extract plenums

Neatly installed and well insulated duct and pipe services

The services installation is by a company called Go Green Engineering who have worked closely with us to ensure services are installed in accordance with our design, are fully insulated and adhere to the strict air tight criteria where they penetrate the fabric.

Services air tight penetration seal

In addition to designing mechanical services for optimum radiant and air quality comfort we also designed the electrical systems to limit electric magnetic radiation (EMR) in the home, which is another healthy building design principle.  

The clients themselves, who were fully involved in the design journey, will be sourcing their own managed wood on their permaculture site to fuel the wood burner.   

For more details on our low energy design service visit our expertise page 

Sherwoods with its lovely green roof coming along nicely

Sherwoods timber cladding

Fuel Poverty: 1 Million UK Families Cannot Afford to Heat their Homes

As designers of super insulated and healthy buildings we were saddened to read in this BBC news article that more than 1 million families in the UK cannot afford to heat their poorly insulated homes, and are living in squalid, damp, cold and mouldy conditions. Given that in 2000 Parliament aimed to end fuel poverty by 2016, it is clear that there is still a long way to go.  

A warm and healthy home should be a fundamental right of any family.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:

'Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’

This is more than simply providing shelter from the elements; the standard of housing has to be adequate for the health and well-being of the individual. It is well known by medical professions that damp and mouldy conditions affect the immune system, often resulting in respiratory infections, allergies, and asthma; these are not thriving conditions for growing families, and the mental stress associated with these conditions should not be underestimated. These conditions still fall short of any basic human right.    

Insulating buildings and providing adequate air quality is not just about saving energy and reducing fuel poverty; it can and should also provide comfortable, healthy conditions in which people can thrive.

An example of unsatisfactory standards of living - photo from www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35834733

Gale & Snowden Architects has always been concerned with the health impacts of our buildings, continually striving to research and specify materials and finishes which do not unduly impact on the health of occupants.

More recently, G&S has been instrumental in establishing the Building Biology Association (BBA), a not-for-profit organisation whose purpose is to raise the awareness and promote an understanding of the importance of healthy buildings.

  

As part of its commitment to education, the BBA will be launching the IBN Building Biology Consultant course in May 2016, with part of the syllabus addressing health hazards in buildings.

The course, fully accredited by the Institut für Baubiologie + Nachhaltigkeit (IBN), has been translated into English for the first time, and will involve online learning, face-to-face seminars, and a written exam after the duration of the course, typically undertaken over a 12 month period.

The first online course is scheduled to start from May 15th with the BBA assisting the IBN in running the course in the UK. Additional courses will be run at regular intervals following the launch of the first course.

The BBA will soon be sending out further details about the course and how you can apply.

To be kept up-to-date with the latest BBA news and information, you can sign up to their mailing list here or follow them on twitter or facebook.

Gale & Snowden Exhibiting at Ecobuild 2016 with the Building Biology Association

Gale & Snowden Architects will be exhibiting alongside the Building Biology Association at the  forthcoming Ecobuild show at ExCeL London on Tuesday 8th, Wednesday 9th and Thursday 10th March 2016.

Part of an international movement, the Building Biology Association Ltd., or BBA, is an independent organisation whose purpose is to promote the awareness, understanding, design, construction and use of healthy buildings. The BBA is currently in the process of becoming a non-profit organisation.

The BBA is linked to the The Institute of Building Biology + Sustainability, or IBN (Institut für Baubiologie + Nachhaltigkeit), which was founded in Germany in 1983 with the mission to offer a holistic approach to Building Biology.

The Building Biology Association will be manning the stand alongside BBA Founder Member Gale & Snowden Architects, who has been pioneering healthy building design for over 20 years in the UK. Gale & Snowden was also the first Building Biology Consultancy in the UK to be officially accredited by the IBN in Germany.

Gale & Snowden is pleased to announce a free ticket offer for the show - for free tickets, visitors should click on the above link and register on the Ecobuild website. Tickets will be sent via email and are valid for all three days of the event.

The Building Biology Association stand will be located at stand E4038 (see in red, below), near Visitors' Entrance 1 - if you are at ExCeL London during the show we would be pleased to see you - come over and say hello!

Terms and conditions regarding free tickets can be found on the Ecobuild website.

The Building Biology Association exhibiting at the recent Homebuilding & Renovating Show at ExCeL London.

Government report identifies Passivhaus as best meeting the 'Performance Gap' between design expectation and built performance

The recently published government report, 'Building Performance Evaluation Programme: Findings from domestic projects', conducted by Innovate UK (formally the Technology Strategy Board), set out to find out if low-carbon homes really were performing as energy-efficiently as predicted at the design stage, and if not, what was causing the 'performance gap'. 

The UK is legally bound to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. Building better low-carbon homes will help the UK achieve this ambitious goal. 

The Innovate UK report, published earlier this month on the GOV.UK website, looked at data from a subset of 76 homes in the Innovate UK’s Building Performance Evaluation Programme (BPE). The properties chosen in the BPE are part of leading-edge developments across the UK where low-carbon design was a priority, and include two of Gale & Snowden Architects' recent residential projects, Knight's Place and Rowan House.

The report looks at three forms of low-carbon design (Passivhaus, Passive Solar and Traditional with renewable energy systems) and concludes that: 'homes built to Passivhaus standards achieved the best airtightness and insulation values, which means they had the lowest heat loss and the best thermal performance'.

Gale & Snowden was involved in the BPE programme, spending a period of over two years monitoring five Passivhaus flats at Knight's Place and Rowan House. Our previous blog post discussing the methods used to monitor the flats can be found here.

Knight's Place

The Innovate UK report found that Knight's Place came second across the schemes tested in airtightness results, achieving air permeabilities of 0.30m3/hr/m2 and 0.74m3/hr/m2 (at 50Pa) against a design of 0.41m3/hr/m2 (at 50Pa). The worst performing scheme was as much as 14.48m3/hr/m2 (at 50Pa) worse than designed. Credit goes to ISG Pearce Ltd. contractors for achieving such outstanding airtight construction.

Other findings in the report include:

• Adopting Passivhaus principles can achieve very low energy use for space heating. Long-term low heating bills can repay the extra effort and attention needed onsite. 

• Construction has a limited effect on electricity use. However, the use of low-power fittings, including lights, can reduce demand. Efficient construction provides a much bigger scope for savings in space heating. 

Having designed low-energy buildings for nearly 25 years, Gale & Snowden welcome the report's findings and will use the information and strategies outlined to build on their already vast experience in Passivhaus and low-energy design.

To read more about Passivhaus and energy-efficient design, visit our website. Gale & Snowden is registered with the Passivhaus Institute in Germany as a Certified Designer, as well as being a member of the Passivhaus Trust in the UK. Gale & Snowden also offer a Passivhaus design consultancy service, with more information available here.

Follow us on twitter for the latest updates @galeandsnowden

The full 38-page report can be downloaded from here, or read below:

G&S Featured on The Modern House with High-Quality Modern Design

Gale & Snowden Architects is pleased to announce that one of our houses, completed in 2010, is being featured on the prestigious The Modern House website and has been recognised as a high-quality modern design of significance.

The Greenwood project is a unique new build dwelling, set in the beautiful North Devon countryside, close to the village of High Bickington. Gale & Snowden Architects was able to obtain detailed planning permission for this ecological and low energy building on the site of a former single-storey dwelling. 

The innovative building and landscape design makes the best use of site assets: the dwelling is built into the south facing bank of the valley to maximise solar gains and panoramic countryside views, whilst seeking shelter from cold Northerly winds. The site generates its own fuel and power from coppiced wood, solar thermal and photovoltaic panels, and its productive garden provides food for the occupants.

Key features of the project are:

• Beneficial solar heat gain

• Super-insulated – triple glazing and high levels of insulation throughout

• Non-thermal bridging detailing

• Air tight construction

• Thermal mass design

• Natural daylight design

• Natural ventilation

• Minimal space heating requirements - one wood burner can provide all space heating.

• Healthy building design in accordance with Building Biology principles – e.g.: non-VOC and non-chlorine based (non-PVC) materials, organic paints, stains and oils, natural materials

• Low water use design

• Solar photovoltaic panels, which provide an annual feed-in tariff that has recently been in excess of £1,000 per year

• Solar thermal providing hot water

• Low energy lighting and appliances throughout

The design also features local crafts incorporated into the building such as the bespoke oak spiral staircase, joinery throughout and the handcrafted kitchen.

The house has been designed around a spectacular open plan kitchen / dining / living room that has soaring ceiling heights. Largely double-height, this is a room with rare qualities of light and space and has wonderful views across the valley.

Gale & Snowden Architects provided full and integrated Architectural and Mechanical Engineering design services for this project from concept design to completion.
As building plots for self-build projects are becoming more scarce, a number of Gale & Snowden’s clients are finding properties that are beyond renovation. The practice has successfully achieved planning approvals for several similar projects for new and much improved ecologically aware dwellings.

To view more information and images of Greenwood, visit the project profile on our website. Also take a look at similar one-off houses by Gale & Snowden Architects.

Follow us on twitter for the latest updates @galeandsnowden

Barnstaple & North Devon Museum Gains Stage 1 Heritage Lottery Funding

Gale & Snowden Architects' involvement with Barnstaple and North Devon Museum has led to their concept design study of the Long Bridge Wing gaining Stage 1 Heritage Lottery Funding.

Gale & Snowden was selected by North Devon District Council to undertake a concept design study for a new extension to the Barnstaple and North Devon Museum: the ‘Long Bridge Wing'.

This concept design was submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund in a bid to gain Stage 1 funding, which will enable the Museum to hold public consultations and to develop the design of the extension, leading to a Stage 2 funding bid later this year. 

If the Stage 2 bid is successful, further funding would be released, and alongside ongoing fundraising efforts made by the Museum and the Barnstaple Museum Development Trust, the extension could become a reality in 2018.

The Stage 1 proposal included a double-height atrium space and would incorporate an improved café and a new Social History Gallery, designed to showcase life in North Devon over the past 100 years, displaying such artefacts as a Huxtable plough and the last Barnstaple salmon boat. The proposal also replanned the interior of the existing museum to improve visitor circulation through galleries and exhibitions.

450m2 of existing displays and collections would be improved and upgraded to contemporary standards, including the geology, natural history, archaeology and manufacturers of North Devon and Barnstaple. The increase in footprint would also allow for the redisplaying of the Shapland and Petter furniture and Brannam Art Pottery collections, which demonstrate Barnstaple’s importance as a creative manufacturing centre during the Arts and Crafts period.

In addition to the new Social History Gallery, the proposal included a high-quality temporary exhibition space, improved storage facilities, and fit-for-purpose educational and meeting facilities, all with full disabled access.

Gale & Snowden Architects' design for the proposed Long Bridge Wing extension would ensure it would be built to ultra-low energy Passivhaus standards, and incorporate low energy and Healthy Building features including:

• Protection of artifacts from direct UV sunlight

• Temperature and humidity controls

• Beneficial solar heat gain

• Super-insulated – triple glazing and high levels of insulation throughout

• Non-thermal bridging detailing

• Natural ventilation

• Low energy lighting and appliances throughout

• Healthy building design in accordance with Building Biology principles, e.g. non-VOC and non-chlorine based (non-PVC) materials, organic paints, stains and oils

• Natural and low embodied energy materials

• Low water-use design

• Airtight construction

The images were shown at a public display at the Museum in the summer of 2015.

Gale & Snowden very much enjoyed working with Barnstaple and North Devon Museum during the Stage 1 process and wish the Museum all the best with their ongoing fundraising.

To take a look at more conceptual images of the scheme, visit our webpage here. Also take a look at similar cultural and leisure projects by Gale & Snowden Architects.

Follow us on twitter for the latest updates @galeandsnowden

G&S Gain Planning Permission for Oak Frame Extension to North Devon Listed Cottage #ecodesign

Gale & Snowden Architects has recently gained Planning Permission and Listed Building Consent for an extension and internal reworking to a thatched cottage nestled in the North Devon countryside.

Gale & Snowden was employed to design a super-insulated, timber-frame kitchen extension to the Grade II Listed former farmhouse, making best use of the stunning views over the garden, surrounding countryside and further afield to Dartmoor.

The fully-glazed garden elevation, combined with a high, open-vaulted roof, will allow daylight to flood into the extension. Large sliding doors will seamlessly bring together inside and outside spaces, improving the connection between the house and garden.

The materials proposed - natural stone walling, large section timber frame and slate roofing - are in keeping with the local North Devon vernacular and pay homage to its listed setting.

In addition, Gale & Snowden was employed to rework the internal room arrangement to create an improved layout whilst retaining and celebrating the cottage's features of historical importance, including timber beams and a bread oven.

To view more information and images of similar projects, visit our website. Also take a look at similar one-off houses by Gale & Snowden Architects.

Follow us on twitter for the latest updates @galeandsnowden

G&S Knights Place featured in Passive House Plus magazine: Warm & Healthy Flats that Need No Heating

Gale & Snowden's affordable housing scheme in Exeter, Knights Place, has been featured on the Passive House Plus (PH+) magazine website.

PH+, a bimonthly publication and website focused on Passivhaus and Passive House technology features Knights Place in an article entitled Warm and Healthy Devon Flats that Need no Heating.

Completed in 2011, Knights Place, an award-winning exemplar sustainable housing scheme that is fully accessible according to Lifetime Homes Standards, was amongst the first multi-residential certified passive houses in the UK.

The scheme was designed with low energy use throughout: the holistic passive design strategy allows the units to be operated without a conventional heating system, and at the same time avoiding overheating in summer.  The result of this is extremely low heating energy bills for tenants, tackling fuel poverty.

Gale & Snowden, with funding from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) / Innovate UK, revisited the scheme a year after completion and undertook a two year building performance evaluation monitoring exercise, between 2012 and 2014. 

Our previous blog post TSB Monitoring at Knights Place Proves Passivhaus Works outlines the results of the exercise and includes the full report.

During the monitoring period, several of the flats were not using any heating and the ones that were, had energy bills in line with the design predictions.  The two year study included a winter extreme and summer heat wave that exceeded the current summer weather files used as part of the overheating design assessment.  We were able to assess in detail how a super-insulated building performs during these hot extremes.   

Even in the UK climate, overheating in buildings and homes is becoming increasingly common and problematic.  It was imperative to us that we did not follow this trend.

We assessed with PHPP and dynamic thermal modelling software optimising cross flow ventilation strategies, glazing ratios, and construction mass.  Our study found that the flats perform as designed using current weather design files and that they also performed well during weather extremes, exhibiting no overheating.  This has given us even greater confidence in the design approach we take, and the design tools we use.   

In addition to their low energy credentials the buildings were also designed using Building Biology healthy design principles.  We were able to include in the study the testing and evaluation of our low electromagnetic radiation (EMR) design, daylight design and air quality.  G&S is the founding member of the Building Biology Association UK and is pleased to be able to offer healthy building surveys and consultancy services.

All the tests found the flats to be operating within their design parameters - optimum daylight levels, low EMR and excellent air quality.  In some flats we optimised the MVHR further to provide better air quality than detailed in the ventilation regulations, which is one advantage of an MVHR system.   

Through an ongoing process of evaluation and review, our experience gained in the design and subsequent monitoring of this exemplar scheme is now being used to further optimise future designs.

To view more information and images of Knights Place, visit the project profile on our website. Also take a look at other residential projects by Gale & Snowden Architects.

Follow us on twitter for the latest updates @galeandsnowden

Exeter Active Passivhaus swimming pool plans to go on show at Public Consultation exhibition

Members of the public are invited to visit the Exeter Guildhall to view plans for the new Passivhaus leisure centre, Exeter Active, at a two day public consultation event next week.

Initial design concept for 'Exeter Active', the first Passivhaus Certified leisure building in the UK

The project will see the current bus and coach park at Paris Street redeveloped to deliver two swimming pools, fitness suite, health spa, exercise studios, café and crèche contained within the UK's first Passivhaus leisure building.

The eight lane pool and four lane learner pool will both have moving floors to maximise their flexibility and accessibility for a wide range of water sports, and there will be an additional water confidence pool for babies and young children to get their first taste of a swimming pool environment.  Based on Building Biology principles, the pools will include modern filtration techniques which minimise the use of harmful chemicals while ensuring that the water quality is well in excess of the average for a standard UK pool.

Designed to the Passivhaus standard, the new leisure centre is expected to deliver a 70% saving on energy usage compared to a standard leisure centre.  This substantial saving, along with the attractive range of facilities, will ensure the profitability of Exeter Active, generating income for the Council to invest in facilities and services throughout the city.

G&S is proud to form an integral part of the Exeter Active design team being: Passivhaus Designer, Building Biology IBN Consultant, Climate Change Adaptation Consultant, and Architect for the external envelope of the building.

The Public Consultation exhibition will take place at Exeter Guildhall on Monday 30th November between 12 and 7pm and Tuesday 01 December between 11am and 7pm.

Gale & Snowden Architects, together with other members of the design team, will be on hand to answer questions and discuss the plans with visitors.  

We look forward to seeing you there!!