Design Buy Build Issue 19 2016 | Page 9

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.