The main issues addressed were:
1. High levels of insulation: see below
2. No cold bridges: great care taken, particularly
around fabric discontinuities, to ensure that
cold bridges did not occur
3. High thermal mass: maintains a very stable
internal thermal environment. Even in winter
the building temperature only degrades by
about 1 degree per day when the heating is
switched off
4. Natural cooling by volume and mass: South
facing ground floor rooms have 3m ceiling
heights to ensure stratification of air when
house not in use so that the hot air transfers
heat into the concrete first floor and results
in those rooms never rising above 22oC in
the summer of 2014. The central stair void
rises 8.6m from the ground floor and acts as
a chimney to remove hot air in summer. The
two roof windows at the apex can be opened
remotely to allow the escape of warm air
5. Excellent natural lighting and low energy
LED downlights provide very good levels of
lighting with minimum energy usage
6. Draught proof and air tight: Air tight to 0.98,
but the performance in use will exceed this due
to protection installed internally and externally,
at construction and material discontinuities
7. Ventilation: Mechanical heat recovery
ventilation unit
8. Heat pump: The carefully sited air to water
heat pump used to supplement passive gains
and to heat the hot water cylinder
9. Solar roof mounted Photo Voltaic Panels as
roof covering to south facing elevation
10. Site layout, dwelling orientation and the
orientation of stone finished patio all contribute
to the performance of the dwelling as the
microclimate around the house is slightly
altered to benefit the overall performance.
What Makes The Consultancy Innovative?
Why are you different? What do you offer to clients
that your competitors don’t?
The innovation demonstrated at Lang Lane is
related to the total design approach which takes into
account every aspect of current understanding for
the creation of low energy housing at economical
construction cost.