56 PROJECT REPORT: SOCIAL & AFFORDABLE HOUSING
The system employs the natural ‘phase change’ properties of hemp used to perform “much better than its U-values suggest.” The MD adds: “It allows us to build zero carbon houses at the same rate and cost that other people build traditional, Building Regs-compliant homes. He asserts: “We think it’s the best building system out there, that’s why we’re not prepared to build with anything else!”
Tackling the real challenge Despite the impressive performance credentials and innovative build methods behind the new homes, Pritchett tells me that the “construction was the easy part.” “We can do zero carbon houses like shelling peas now; we’ve built about 60 over the last five years, so we know what works and what doesn’t,” he says. “Finding the site, getting the funding, putting it all together – that’s where the real challenge lies.”
When it comes to daylighting, Greencore “followed the principles of Passivhaus,” as on all other aspects of the properties – from the high levels of insulation, the triple- glazed windows, high levels of air tightness, and of course, solar orientation. “Sadly,” he says, however, the UK planning system makes optimum solar orientation “very difficult,” being “far more concerned with following building lines and convention than optimisation.” As such, the design team “did the best they could” to introduce the maximum natural light through orientation, but in the end decided to spend more money on the PVs to compensate for any deficits in solar gain.
Beyond expectations
All of the homes – as all that Greencore builds – have been constructed using the company’s ‘Biond’ building system. Developed in-house eight years ago, Biond (a play on words combining ‘performing beyond expectations,’ and ‘bio-based’), is a hemp-lime panelised construction system. Pritchett says it’s more flexible than volumetric methods, avoids “copy and paste-looking houses,” and allows the team to deliver higher quality and accuracy of measurement, while avoiding thermal bridging, and minimising any construction shortcomings when compared with generic building methods.
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Market conditions were one such hold up for the company, heavily affecting cash flow and sales: “The country was just in the process of leaving the EU during the development process, and we were supposed to ‘get Brexit done’ by March 2019, but that didn’t happen, and it proved difficult to make sales in that market, and indeed for the rest of the year.” After the market returned to some normality (Pritchett says that the General Election producing a majority Government was beneficial to market stability), in January and February 2020 it “proved really buoyant.” However then Covid hit, and lockdown brought “yet more delays, uncertainty, and challenges to the process.”
He decries the planning system as a “great burden” to projects, and one which he has struggled with throughout not just this project, but “in his whole career.” “We come across it all the time,” he explains. “The system is policed very rigidly and vigorously, but it’s a 10 year old policy, it’s too focused on garden sizes, parking, numbers of bedrooms, and not on carbon, energy and ecology, the things we need to be addressing.” “It’s just not in line with delivering zero carbon for 2050,” he adds. Despite the challenges, the planning officers had been “pretty positive” all the way through the process, says Pritchett. He however believes that this was a double-edged sword; because the “planners liked the scheme so much,” they imposed various conditions that they
ADF FEBRUARY 2022
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