Active approach to building new homes

New build developments are fairly common for Coventry City Council, which is consistently beating its affordable housing targets, but its latest scheme is anything but run of the mill

The council no longer holds any stock after transferring its homes to Whitefriars Housing Group but it continues to ensure a good supply of affordable homes by working with its development partners.

As housing strategy manager Ayaz Maqsood explains: “The affordable housing requirement for the city is 304 affordable housing units per annum and over the last three years we have exceeded the target even during very difficult times in the development world.”

The council has been involved in a range of new build schemes including supported housing for older people and people with mental health issues and disabilities but the ongoing Sampson Close development looks set to take housebuilding in the region to another level.

“We are an authority that is meeting its affordable housing target and doing particularly well in terms of housing development,” explains Maqsood. “We are not just doing run of the mill developments, we are trying to do exemplar schemes like this particular one in Sampson Close.”

The development on a brownfield site in north Coventry should become the first and largest social housing scheme in the Midlands to obtain PassivHaus (PH) Certification.

The 23 properties – a mix of terraced housing and apartments – are being developed by Orbit Heart of England with architect Bailey Garner and contractor Wates Construction.

The concept behind passive housing originated in Germany in the 1990s and since then more than 17,000 homes have been built in accordance with the European passivhaus standards, however in the United Kingdom only two homes have achieved PH certification.

The Sampson Close properties are designed to exceed energy performance standards and reduced carbon emissions for level 3 of the Code for Sustainable Homes and the PH technologies will lead to significantly reduced heating costs.

“Basically the concept of a passive house is an airtight house and the aim is to reduce the amount of energy inefficiency through the external works,” explains Maqsood.

Modern methods of construction will be used to improve on-site productivity and they will be built using a factory assembled closed panel timber frame construction, designed and erected on site by Gumpp Maier in Binswangen who have an established and proven track record in PH and low energy housing.

Individual sections are then brought to site in a predefined sequence and assembled in an erection programme, allowing the whole scheme to be weatherproofed and made available to finishing trades faster than with traditional techniques.

“Passivhaus features allow the pre-setting of controls for the optimum indoor comfort levels which are equally affordable to residents,” explains a spokesperson for Orbit. “The Sampson Close homes will not suffer from cold, draughty conditions with the elimination of condensation and damp issues and the super-insulation and fenestration standards will also make homes quieter by reducing the amount of outside noise getting inside.”

The idea to adopt the passivhaus concept was originally conceived by Orbit in 2008, as an opportunity to improve energy efficiency and significantly reduce energy costs for occupiers – something which also caught the attention of Coventry City Council.

“The basic principles and concept of it work for us, as not only is it energy efficient and beneficial to the environment, but what we were really interested in, in terms of social housing is the fuel costs for potential residents or tenants of this accommodation,” explains Maqsood.

“When we are carrying out work with residents and tenants one of the key factors is the overall cost of housing. I t goes beyond just simply rent and services charges because in some of the old stock up and down the country the real burden is fuel costs. If we are able to minimise that we are able to give people more disposable income. That is why the whole package of the PassiveHaus worked for us not just the fact that it was good for the environment.”

Work started on the £2.8 million scheme in A pril and is expected to take about 10 months. Once it is complete the scheme will be monitored for energy efficiency by Orbit and Coventry University, who will feed their findings back to Coventry City Council.

“What we wanted to try and do was to develop something which wasn’t just a standard length pilot which people came and viewed and then wasn’t replicated,” explains Maqsood. “What we tried to do with this scheme is develop technologies and construction methods which could be used in mainstream construction.”

PassivHaus technology is fairly widespread in Europe and Scandinavia but is still relatively new in the U nited Kingdom and as a result building such schemes is not cheap but Maqsood believes that if there are organisations out there that are prepared to lead the way then others will follow.

He explains: “At the moment it is more expensive because of the technology used and the fact that some of it has to be imported from abroad. What we are hoping to do is to really market this particular scheme to show the benefits for the end consumer and thereby attract not only more housing associations but also private developers to consider this method of construction and by achieving economies of scale you will reduce prices.

“When you hear some of the figures you understand why people are a little reserved in terms of pushing on with this technology. But it is only when there are brave associations and developers willing to push ahead that everybody benefits and those costs will come down significantly.”

And Coventry is a city that is used to leading the way with brave and bold new ideas. The city centre is currently undergoing an ambitious £1 billion redevelopment, part of a long-term plan which Maqsood describes as a “second resurrection of Coventry”.

He continues: “We are a fairly dynamic city in terms of development that even in these difficult times is coming up with ambitious schemes. And Coventry has got a history of pushing ahead with technologies, particularly in the construction field.”

So while the future of Coventry’s affordable housing may well lie in PassivHaus technology the council’s approach to providing more homes is anything but passive and its pro-active building programme looks set to continue.