Pasquill was selected by Climate Energy Homes as a key supplier in the creation of an unprecedented development of 51 new Passivhaus-compliant homes at Rainham in East London.
The project, undertaken in partnership with Circle Housing Group, is located on a 1.15ha brownfield site and has the ultimate aim of reducing social tenants’ heating and hot water costs by up to 80% each year.
The scheme has seen Pasquill provide floor and ceiling cassettes as part of Climate Energy’s ‘ecoTECH’ build system. This is based on factory-built closed timber frames supplied to site complete with breather membranes, insulation and plasterboard, back boxes and conduits. Secured by Design windows and doors are all also pre-installed in the factory to ensure air tightness.
A number of cassettes featured Posi-Joists, while others incorporated engineered timber I-Joists. The former were used on houses and the latter for apartments.
Cassettes were required to ensure early protection for the finished wall surfaces of the closed panel system. This included ceiling cassettes to the upper storeys to provide protection prior to the installation of the Pasquill trussed rafter roof.
The Posi-Joist cassettes additionally had an upper surface in the form of a finished walking surface to receive tenants’ floor coverings. They also incorporated temporary crash decks to the staircase openings, with access hatches and provision for future lift installations.
An additional benefit of using the Posi-Joists themselves was the easy accommodation of HVAC ductwork, while I-Joist cassettes were finished with a subfloor ready for the application on-site of screed.
Part of the challenge of the design input required from the company has been to ensure the correct integration of services, ensuring that floor joists do not clash with the location of services within the enclosed system.
In order to comply fully with the Passivhaus standard, the floor cassettes had factory-installed air-tightness barriers incorporated into the factory-insulated ring beams to ensure a continuation of the airtightness barrier of the frame system. Commenting on Pasquill’s role in the project, Christine Hynes, chief executive of Cimate Energy Homes said: "Build quality and sustainable procurement are key to the ecoTECH build system’s success, so at Climate Energy Homes we were keen to work in partnership with a company which has a track record in both areas."
Pasquill has, in fact, been working with Climate Energy Homes since early 2010, although this is the first Passivhaus project the two companies have worked on together. The use of the company’s off-site ecoTECH build system meant the homes at Rainham could be constructed on site at the rate of around one every two days. They can be completed for trades and services within a week.
The 51 houses at the site will comprise one, two, three and four bedroom variants, with two and three storey terraced housing alongside flats over three storeys. Each property will have a front and back garden, and each apartment its own balcony.
Since the announcement of the zero carbon target for new homes back in 2006, there has been much discussion about how this can be achieved. Our view at Pasquill is that it demands firstly a high specification for the fabric of new homes and then close attention to detailing and construction on site. These are both areas where we are focused on providing solutions and, in association, Passivhaus is additionally one proven route for low energy building.
The number of Passivhaus homes built in the UK has risen exponentially in recent years. The first was built in 2008 and, according to Passivhaus Trust UK, three buildings were certified in 2009, ten in 2010, and 100 by mid 2012. The total number of Passivhaus units (completed, on site, planning, in the pipeline) this year is expected to be 886, and it could be over 1,000 if several large-scale retrofit projects go ahead and make it to certification stage. And encouragingly, this trend is set in the context of wider positive trends across the construction sector.
Talking to our housebuilder customers we are hearing nothing but good news about the steady climb out of recession and, in the light of this, we have made a six-figure investment in operations and also in extensive staff training.
Our spending plans continue into 2015, with finance earmarked for equipment and infrastructure. We have also introduced a new trainee scheme as part of our longterm strategy of nurturing talent within the business to enable us to continue to evolve, adapt and service Passivhaus and other key development trends in the demanding, fastchanging construction sector
