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Passivhaus Scheme

Tipton, West Midlands

Basic 1
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We were pleased to work on this award-winning domestic new build project alongside Exeter City Council, PRS Group and Gale & Snowden.
Gale & Snowden Architects specified our Basic 1 external wall insulation system with 250mm grey expanded polystyrene for the construction of 14 Passivhaus units in Exeter. The developments of Brookway and Bennett Square are the council’s second programme of council-owned builds in Exeter and form part of an on-going strategy to build more council homes to address fuel poverty in the region.
The buildings were designed with a fabric-first approach, whilst also addressing the issue of fuel poverty and the need to ensure the resident’s fuel bills would be kept to a minimum. The aim is to reduce the energy demand of a building by up to 90% of that of a standard UK building, without compromising on comfort or indoor air quality.
Our design focussed on a fabricfirst and optimal orientation approach to first minimise the energy demand of the building, reducing its carbon emissions, before adding renewables where appropriate. It tackles both a changing climate and fuel poverty.
David Gale, Gale & Snowden Architects
This is typically achieved through high levels of insulation, exceptional air tightness, high-performance windows and doors and highly efficient mechanical ventilation heat recovery.
The Basic 1 system for this particular project incorporated 250mm of grey expanded polystyrene above the DPC and 250mm extruded polystyrene below the DPC and was installed to the exterior of the medium density blockwork construction. A Silitect top coat was used to complete the installation and finished in three shades of red on some properties and cream on the others, making for a striking visual appearance of the blocks as a whole.