HIGH POINT
“I love the fact that we’ve got a fireplace in such a modern house. I like to decorate our home for Christmas and although we chose not to install an actual fire – or chimney – I have a mantle-shelf which is great for a vase of flowers, and gives us a lovely focal point for decorations.” – Deanna Martin
house is designed to ensure that the rooms requiring the most heat – the living areas – are positioned and orientated to utilise solar gain. The design placed windows in the ideal locations to maximise daylight and reduce the Martins’ dependence on artificial lighting. And conversely, it includes as little north-facing glazing as possible in order to minimise heat loss during the winter months.
200 m2
Also, the outside space is arranged to provide a south-easterly facing garden at the back of the house – David’s pride and joy – which receives plentiful sunlight. The north-facing garden to the front, strategically sheltered with existing planting and structures, provides a cooler, shaded area.
Along with triple-glazed windows, the walls, floor and zinc-clad aluminium roof are super- insulated, all exceeding the minimum requirements of Building Regulations. This insulation helps to regulate and stabilise the internal temperature of the house by enveloping the high thermal mass structure, which includes concrete floors upstairs (result – no creaks). The inside stays warm in winter and cool in summer with minimal energy input.
There are no radiators, and underfloor heating runs throughout the house. All of the ground floor is tiled, and elsewhere it’s real wood flooring except for two bedrooms, including the master. “The underfloor heating was for aesthetic reasons first and foremost,” says
september/october 2019
“It was really quite difficult to find people who were willing to come out and price up what is, for the area, an unusual job”
David. “But the really pleasing thing is that the heating is so uniform. You don’t go out of the living room into the hall to be met by a blast of freezing cold air, the temperature is ambient throughout.”
There is also a 4 kWp array of solar panels on the south-facing part of the roof. All these measures ensure that the building achieved an A-rated energy performance certificate (EPC), has minimal running costs and minimal associated CO2
emissions.
/h@50pa. Russell says that this is five times better than the minimum required by Building Regulations.
www.sbhonline.co.uk
When the final air test was undertaken, it revealed that the building is an impressive 2.39 m3
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