City of York Council Housing Delivery Programme
In September 2019, York City Council announced an ambitious programme to build 600 sustainable low-energy homes over a 5 year period. York developed a Housing Delivery Programme Design Manual of 5 key principles including an emphasis on healthy homes and neighbourhoods, place making, and energy use. All homes are required to be built to the certified Passivhaus standard, with 40% affordable and 20% for social renting.
The brief was informed by the Design Manual, which required the building services design to:
- Adopt a fabric first approach by developing all new build housing to certified Passivhaus standards.
- Install the most appropriate renewables (including consideration of co-owned solar PV systems which maximise the use of free generated solar electricity) in order to achieve zero carbon whilst also minimising bills for residents and helping to tackle fuel poverty.
- Build homes with heating and ventilation systems which are simple to use and maintain.
- Reduce water usage within homes through carefully specified internal fittings, grey water recycling and water butts.
- Select building materials considering their carbon footprint, whole life cost and ease of repair and maintenance.
- Carry out post-occupancy monitoring on a percentage of the completed dwellings in partnership with a local academic institution to ensure there is no performance gap between design and build and to assess how occupants can most effectively benefit from living in zero carbon housing.
LEDA were appointed to provide building services design as part of the wider design team, including award-winning architects Mikhail Riches, creating a scheme for zero-carbon housing that fits well with the carbon-neutral commitment made by York. To deliver net zero carbon in use, the Passivhaus methodology is the best way to achieve the lowest-possible heating energy demands in a predictable way, allowing us to calculate reliably the renewables needed to offset these demands.
Our design responds to the requirements that Passive House makes in particularly in the areas of ventilation – mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) will be required, and for the design of the hot water system, short hot water pipe runs and highly insulated hot water cylinders are required. The very stringent air tightness target will require the Building Services design to take account of the airtightness strategy and minimise the number of penetrations through the air tightness line.
As part of the building services design we will ask all key supplier options for data on embodied carbon and seek maintenance details to enable input into a whole life cycle carbon emissions assessment. We will establish a bench mark for the embodied carbon associated with building services to enable continued assessment and improvement of this area.
The first two sites have now received planning permission, with a further 5 future sites planned.
Images © Mikhail Riches
Client: | City of York Council |
Services Provided: | Sustainability advice, Full building services design |
Dates: | May 2020 – ongoing |
Contract Value: | N/A |