Mike Murray and his architect developed an overall services brief that allowed some experimentation with the shapes and form of the building fabric.

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scratch. ‘There is definitely a hole in the market because most residential clients will rely on the plumber to select equipment and so on, and that’s not going to work on something a bit more novel,’ says Murray. Murray and Carter developed an overall services

brief employing ‘good engineering principles’ that established basic U-values for the structure and allowed some experimentation with the shapes and form of the building fabric. All this was in the context of Murray’s vision of a dwelling that closely matched the environmental standards set by the German Passivhaus approach, athough not in every respect.

Glazing

For example, they designed in plenty of south-facing glazing to allow for solar gain in the winter, but included large bi-folding doors that could be opened up in summer to allow the occupied space to cool down. A large rooflight was also fitted to allow for stack-effect ventilation. Murray drew the line at the imported triple-glazing,

which he considered out of keeping with the overall look of the house, but Argon-filled low E double- glazing is more than adequate, he says. He also struggled with the ‘lazy use’ of trickle vents

in standard windows as they threatened to compromise his target air tightness. Eventually, Murray instructed the manufacturer to omit them from the windows he specified. He also wrapped the whole of the blockwork and oak structure in an airtight membrane – with some

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CIBSE Journal June 2010

challenging details at interfaces to windows and doors. High air-tightness criteria and low energy targets

inevitably lead to Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) as another aspect of the design, but so far Murray is experimenting with only using it seasonally, preferring natural ventilation for all but the coldest months. A plate heat exchanger will recover heat from bathroom and utility areas in the main section to heat fresh air input to the living area and the master bedroom; and a separate thermal wheel will extract latent heat from the family bathroom and re-use that in the children’s bedrooms.

When I discussed low-energy

design with planners they thought I was just talking about glazing

The planners originally wanted him to demolish

the bungalow before starting work on the new house, but the family needed somewhere to live during construction. The new build is very close to the old house, to convince the planners that it would eventually be demolished – and that is now under way with the materials being sent for recycling. He also had a cross-purposes discussion about attitudes to low energy design: ‘They assumed I was just talking about glazing!’ He set about appointing the project team – again using the Egan principles that the contractor

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