Award winner for best best social housing development
Eco local
Some homebuilders make a meal of building one experimental house and not taking it any further, but here a local homebuilder in Devon acting on behalf of a local housing association and using a local firm of architects has built a sustainable neighbourhood of 35 cutting-edge ecohomes for rent with the aim of them becoming a template for rural social housing. There are 23 houses and 12 flats whose rents range from £51.41 per week for a onebedroom flat to £78.43 per week for a four-bedroom house with one bedroom on the ground floor for a wheelchair user.
The local homebuilder is Midas Homes, part of the quoted Galliford Try group, working on behalf of the Devon & Cornwall Housing Association, in partnership with North Devon District Council and Gale and Snowden, who call themselves “ecological and energy efficient architects.” The architects have produced a detailed report on sustainability at Livarot Walk, which is available from them.
It is well known that grouping houses in terraces reduces surface heat losses, but it also enables efficiencies in timberframe prefabrication and construction, and designing the houses to face south and south-west gains benefits from passive and active solar gain. The architects have developed the registered Twin Frame system, which enables a doublethickness timber-frame wall and roof construction to be prefabricated offsite using a panel form of construction, which provides high levels of insulation and reduces thermal bridging.
The roof construction can be prefabricated in panels like the walls; and as roofs are better insulated than walls, the room-in-the-roof design maximises the use of space in the building, and reduces the area of wall and heat loss in the building. Triple-glazed timber windows and doors minimise heat losses. As a result, the homes achieve an Ecohomes rating of “excellent,” and their running costs are extremely economical, with very low fuel bills and low carbon-dioxide emissions.
Similarly, water-efficient appliances and shared rainwater collection results in low water bills. Even the landscape has been designed to high ecological standards, with wildlife corridors and the creation of habitat. Every home has private garden space, fruiting trees and Devon hedge banks.
As architect David Gale says: “Now this prototype is in place, the opportunity exists to extend the benefits of its environmental and running costs elsewhere.”
HomeBuilder: MIDAS HOMES LIMITED
Homeside House, Silverhills Road, Newton Abbot,
Devon TQ12 5YZ
Tel 01626 356666 Fax 01626 331093
Contact: Rod Stone, Associate Architectural Director
Email: rod@midashomes.com
Website: www.midashomes.com
in partnership with
DEVON AND CORNWALL HOUSING ASSOCIATION
Paris Street, Exeter, Devon EX1 2JZ
Tel 01392 252566 Fax 01392 251225
Website: www.dcha.co.uk
Architects: GALE AND SNOWDEN ARCHITECTS
18 Market Place, Bideford, Devon, EX39 2DR
Tel 01237 474952 Fax 01237 425669
Contact: David Gale, Partner
Email: galesnow@ecodesign.co.uk
Website: www.ecodesign.co.uk
Photography: KAREN TAYLOR (01392 215863)