The original house
BACKGROUND
Having lived in Brighton for many years and completed a previous eco-renovation with its attendant complications our client was keen to use a contractor to manage the whole process from start to finish – so chose Bright Green Homes. The house itself was a 1950s split level, detached home typical in Saltdean with cavity walls, a large loft (with a low pitch) and very little in the way of energy efficiency, a dated bathroom & kitchen and old uPVC double glazed windows that were full of condensation.
The whole house was pretty dated
Period/Age of House: 1950s
No. Bedr ooms: 4
No. other rooms: 4
No. of floors: 2
Floor Area: 130m2, which became 195m2 after the whole renovation
Cost: Refurbishment £90,000
Wall type: Cavity Wall
DETAILS
the loft area became the new home for the plant for the PV, power diverter, storage & MVHR
The large loft provided a fantastic opportunity to use this space for the ‘plant’ of the property – including the heating system, storage and the MVHR unit – however clearly there was a need to also increase the loft insulation – however like many people the client wished to retain the storage space. So we insulated with 270mm of Knauf Earthwool (recycled glass bottles) and added a favourite product of ours called Storefloor by Loftzone U value: 0.16W/m2K
A major part of this renovation was lifting all of the floor, insulating in a sensible way (without huge amounts of groundwork) and then laying underfloor heating in an area without drastically altering head heights within the house. This was used using a multi foil product called Airflex, battens and a wet UFH system. In a strange way for this product to be a success you really want to not notice it! But equally we had very little roomn to play with so it was really doing as best as we could with the available space U value: 0.43W/m2K
Adding 90mm of EPS insulation and detailing the windows was key
The house was a cavity wall construction which had been filled with blown fibre sometime ago. We had this investigated and dicovered that this was at best patchy – and irt was decided by us and the client that we would opt for EWI all over the house. This gave the house the best possible U value without huge additional works to removed the poor quality blown fibre from the 80s while maintaining the integrity of the wall U value: 0.26W/m2K
Also we removed the old uPVC double glazed windows that had seen better days and replaced them with top of the range triple glazed timber framed windows supplied by our friends at The Green Building Store – these Performance windows have a teriffic U value overall but also are beautifully made and come with a 10 year manufacturers guarantee U value: 0.26W/m2K
HEATING AND HOT WATER
The MVHR unit makes sure that waste heat from the bathrooms & kitchen are not losat
The new Underfloor heating system is powered by a Worcester Bosch
DRAUGHTS
The whole house has benefited from a re-skim of plaster and also all the new triple glazed windows are fully draught proofed – even on a particularly blustery day the clients are going to be very toasty.
LIGHTING
Lighting throughout supplied with Low Energy LED lights.
PAINTING
We have used recycled yogurt pots turned into HDPE sheets instead of tiles – its looks awesome
Our clients are doing the internal decorations themselves but have chosen to use natural paints for all of thew house.