The Stamford Brook Project is a major demonstration of sustainable housing in the UK, involving the construction of over 700 dwellings over a 5 year period. The first phase of the project is being built to a comprehensive Environmental Performance Standard. This has been developed over a period of 2 years by two large house-builders, Redrow Homes and Taylor Woodrow, in collaboration with National Trust and the Leeds Metropolitan University Buildings and Sustainability Group, with support from ODPM and DTI - the departments of state responsible for energy and industrial policy in the UK. A major component of the Environmental Performance Standard is a prototype energy performance standard [1], which was originally designed to achieve reductions in CO2 emissions from space and water heating of more than 50% compared with 1995 Building Regulations and around 30% compared with 2002 Regulations. Evaluation of this standard is designed to support the on-going review of the Building Regulations requirements for energy performance in new UK dwellings, which in turn forms an important part of the UK’s CO2 reduction strategy, as set out in the White Paper, Our Energy Future [2]. Key features of the Stamford Brook Project are that it has a near-term technical goal and that it is based on load bearing masonry construction. These features were an attempt to maximise the relevance of the project to mainstream UK house-building and to support the process of regulatory development. The second also challenges the received wisdom that high levels of energy and environmental performance require framed construction and/or off site manufacture. Stamford Brook has been designed to demonstrate a challenging but achievable target for mass housing, and to extend, rather than supersede the most common current construction methods. The project is being undertaken using a Participatory Action Research approach. This makes it possible to evaluate both dwelling performance and impacts on participants in the procurement process. The first batches of dwellings are expected to be completed and occupied early in 2005. Pressurisation and coheating tests will be undertaken on completion, and energy use, internal temperatures and indoor air quality will be monitored in a sample of 10 of dwellings over the subsequent year. The purpose of this paper is to report on the experience of the design and construction processes, and on initial results of performance monitoring.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)