Capital Costs, Cost Savings in Use, Carbon Emissions, Payback,
How to Earn £1300 a Year from a Zero Carbon Passivhaus

Fenestration Calculations
Larch House, our first Welsh Passivhaus Social Housing prototype, is officially certified by the Passivhaus Institute and has also been designed to achieve Zero Carbon Code 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes. This is a 3 bed passivhaus designed to minimize Annual Heat Demand (below 15kW/m2/yr). Much of the winter warmth in this house is derived from solar gains, but Ebbw Vale is 1000ft up in the top of a valley, with cold and misty winters. To keep winter heat inside, the insulation levels are very high and because of the relative lack of winter sun compared to a lowland site, the windows are unusually large to maximize the solar gains from a bright overcast winter sky (55% of south elevation). This is the traditional design strategy for a passivhaus, resulting in great comfort, tiny energy bills, and bright and airy interior spaces. However for social housing, we needed to find a way to overcome the costs associated with large windows and retractable blinds, so we made subtle but crucial changes to the way we designed the second passivhaus, Lime House, currently under construction. (more…)

The Welsh Future Homes project, launched today by Jane Davidson AM, Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, is a unique development of three affordable houses and a visitor centre. One of the homes has been designed to meet Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes, making it a zero carbon home - the first to be achieved in Wales.

Each of the buildings are constructed from a range of locally sourced materials that demonstrate high sustainability credentials and low energy costs of as little as £50 per annum.

Read more on the BRE website

Monday 11 October 2010
Islington Town Hall Assembly Rooms
Upper Street, London N1 2UD
www.ukpassivhausconference.org

The UK Passivhaus conference steering group has now completed work on the agenda for this Autumn’s passivhaus conference. The conference will include a small exhibition of carefully selected passivhaus supply companies. All tickets are designed to be affordable for professionals, students and exhibitors – just enough so that the cost of holding the conference can be met.

Download Agenda

Download Flyer

The Offshore Valuation is the first full economic valuation of Britain’s offshore renewable resource.

The report finds that using just one third of the UK’s wind, wave and tidal resource could:

• unlock the electricity equivalent of 1 billion barrels of oil a year (matching North Sea oil and gas production).
• give CO2 reductions of 1.1 billion tonnes by 2050
• create 145,000 new UK jobs

The Offshore Valuation Group is an informal collaboration of government and industry organisations who have come together to address the question: what is the value of the UK’s offshore renewable energy resource?

offshore_valuation_full.pdf

www.offshorevaluation.org

Watch this space for more information coming soon.

I co-run Wake, a non-profit marine conservation initiative based here in Vancouver, Canada. We focus on saving sharks and tuna. Yes, tuna. To find out more about why we are doing this please take a moment this weekend to find out how you can help reduce the number of sharks dying worldwide (currently about 192 every minute). So, if you love the other 71% of this planet and care about every second breath you take, check it:

www.wakeproject.net

We will continue to update the website as we evolve, so please check back whenever you can. It’s a pretty comprehensive site. Dive deep and rediscover this blue beauty you live on.

Oh, and don’t eat tuna. No, seriously, don’t eat tuna. Ask me why.

It’s time to wake up.
Marten

It’s a really great show of what can be achieved by the UK construction industry where there is a keen and motivated and diligent contractor teamed with diligent architects providing a carefully thought out and thoroughly explained airtightness rationale. (more…)

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