Apple Hayes

Apple Hayes, Yorkshire

Our client asked us to design a contemporary home which adopted the best principles of sustainability, without imposing additional demands upon the occupants in terms of maintenance and operation – any innovations required to meet such stringent demands should run in the background, without the need for abnormal interaction from the building’s occupants. As a replacement dwelling in the Green Belt, we were constrained by the volume limits associated with the existing buildings which previously occupied the site. Our brief was to maximise the volume whilst satisfying Planning legislation and this led to a partially subterranean solution.

This low carbon dwelling was conceived to replace an existing, underperforming detached house with a highly sustainable home, designed to achieve Code Level 5 of the Code for Sustainable Homes. We settled on a passive approach first and foremost, supported by more active solutions where required. As a result, the form of the building is predominantly linear, orientated towards the south and south west, in order to maximise the benefit of passive solar gains. The linear plan of the building is broken by a two and a half storey atrium which affords both horizontal and vertical circulation.

Having achieved a good passive solution, we then looked at how this might be balanced against the more active technologies required to satisfy the Code for Sustainable Homes and in particular, SAP. The well-sealed envelope led to the introduction of Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery and in order to maintain control over the internal temperature, a ground source heat pump was also specified as a primary heat source, even though the heat demand is very low. The addition of solar thermal panels for domestic hot water and rainwater harvesting, together with all the additional measures required to achieve Code 5 have resulted in a highly sustainable solution with low operational requirements.