Wimbish Passivhaus- Excellent Performance Continues
The Passivhaus development at Wimbish, Essex has now been occupied for more than eighteen months. Monitoring of the performance of the dwellings, in both qualitative and quantitative terms, continues to prove that energy consumption and bills are low, and comfort levels are good. This confirms the benefit of developing rental properties to the Passivhaus standard.
Wimbish Passivhaus: Building Performance Evaluation, Interim Report 2, April 2013, by Martin Ingham, reports on monitoring of the first twenty months of occupation of the development of the fourteen passivhaus houses and apartments. It provides an update on the first interim report published on the Build with CaRe website in March 2012.
The Wimbish houses are the first passivhaus homes in the UK being monitored in detail under the UK Technology Strategy Board BPE programme. Build with CaRe worked with Hastoe Housing Association to submit a successful bid for funds for this two-year monitoring project and Martin Ingham has been running the monitoring programme since the homes were occupied in June 2011. This report describes the homes and their construction and gives detail not just of the energy and environment monitoring but also about the handover process and the engagement with the occupants and their learning about living in a Passivhaus home.
Comments by the occupants indicate a very high level of satisfaction with their new homes and an occupant survey shows that this development at Wimbish scores highest on most metrics of all the domestic properties so far surveyed. Gas use to date indicates that average heating energy is likely to comply with the passivhaus limit of 15kWh/m2/year. Electricity consumption is, however, higher than expectations and this is likely to be because, as is normal in the UK, housing association tenants bring their own appliances to the properties and these are not as energy efficient as passivhaus planning assumes will be the case.
Temperatures in the homes, humidity and air quality all indicate good performance of the ventilation and the shading, and the properties all remained warm during the winters.
“Excellent performance, with interesting findings” sums up the second interim report.
Read the full article on the Build with CaRe website here.
16th May 2013
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