Environment, energy, sustainable building
This 150-odd-year old historic stone warehouse in the centre of Cirencester has been very carefully converted to create a youth hostel, providing much-needed budget accommodation in this pretty Cotswold town.
An Enerphit retrofit lifts the comfort way above the usual draughty-old-house-that-was-impossible-for-the-owners-to-heat that may be many people’s experience of UK youth hostels. Continue reading “Cotswold stone warehouse becomes Enerphit hostel”
This delightful project is a full Passivhaus – not just Enerphit! – retrofit of a standard 3-bed semi, to make a super-comfortable family home. Continue reading “£60k Passivhaus upgrade of a standard 3-bed semi”
This light and airy Passivhaus was built by a retired couple who wanted to downsize from their awkward older home, to one that would be eco-friendly, comfortable, and work well whatever their future needs.
The successful result is an attractive, warm, modern-looking house. The structure is timber frame with wood-based insulation; the roof meanwhile is basically all PVs, and a heat pump and battery complete the comprehensive renewable set-up, minimising the need to import – and pay for – any grid energy.
Read the article I wrote for Passive House Plus magazine here.
Juraj Mikurcik’s beautiful little self-build Passivhaus is a house that I can totally imagine living in myself, and absolutely loving. Continue reading “Straw-build Herefordshire Passivhaus – one of my favourite case studies!”
Case studies for Passive House Plus: new build
Completed early this year, the new Centre for Medicine at the University of Leicester is by far the largest single building in the UK to meet the passive house standard — and not surprisingly, its design and construction posed tough new challenges on how to meet the rigorous low energy standard on such a large, complicated building. December 2016
A sensitive development of social housing in Lambeth combines three new passive houses with six low energy flats carefully created inside an old Victorian terrace. With the emphasis on good indoor air quality, residents are already reporting improvements in health & well-being since moving from their old accommodation.
Post-war social housing blocks are often seen as both ugly and uncomfortable. They frequently suffer from high energy bills, damp and mould. But three ambitious renovation projects show the answer doesn’t always lie in demolition. Oct 2015
Upgrading a historic home to the passive house standard typically means leaving the façade untouched to preserve the building’s historic appearance, but the team behind this fully passive retrofit in Kensal Green took a totally different approach. Oct 2016
Safeguarding historic documents and other artefacts requires super-stable environmental conditions. This has usually been achieved by using masses of expensive and energy-hogging heating and cooling plant, but a new approach for Herefordshire Council used the passive house approach to conserve energy, money — and the county’s precious historical archives. Nov 2015
A deep retrofit of this 1960s block-built home turned it into a modern ultra low-energy home that emphasises wood, light and natural materials. Aug 2016