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Passiv resistance

Green homes have fallen off the government’s to-do list. But Steve Sampson reports on how one landlord in Plymouth is building them anyway, using one of the most stringent standards in the world.  Photography by Mike Hall

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How housing association @Plymcommhomes is building green homes despite lack of support from the government #ukhousing

The exterior of homes at the Primose Park Passivhaus development

“I didn’t know whether to scream or cry with excitement. I couldn’t believe my luck,” recalls single mum Chantelle Shepherd, as she looks back on receiving the news that she had been allocated a new two-bed affordable house by Plymouth Community Homes (PCH).

Having given birth to her daughter Amiah-Rose prematurely at 29 weeks, Ms Shepherd had been struggling to cope in a one-bed flat as she cared for her newborn who was suffering from chronic lung disease.

“There was a lot of mould and damp,” Ms Shepherd says. Her small home appeared to shrink with the arrival of oxygen tanks and tubing needed to help Amiah-Rose.

“I had been trying to move for ages and had begun to lose hope, but then the call came,” she says.

But the 28-year-old has not only been allocated a new house – she has signed up to be part of a two-year research project on eco-living. Hers is one of 72 new affordable homes – 23 of which are offered on a part-buy basis – built by PCH at a cost of £10.4m to meet rigorous Passivhaus design standards. The first wave of residents moved in January, and the last of the three tranches of homes are slated for completion in June.


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Homes built to the standard should be highly comfortable living environments that need barely any heating. Passivhaus proponents say the internationally recognised building standard can halve the cost of heating a property while creating clean air environments that reduce moisture and mould.

All residents moving into Primrose Park, located just off Bodmin Road in Plymouth, will be invited to contribute to a project that will bring together qualitative and quantitative research to assess the effectiveness of the design standard.

"Passivhaus proponents say the internationally recognised building standard can halve the cost of heating a property"

Whether those aspirations will be met will be the focus of the study, says Nick Jackson, director of business services and development at PCH. “This is a fantastic development and a huge achievement for all involved: homes that are good for residents and the environment. But what we want to know going forward is how they perform, the maintenance and running costs, how residents react. All of that will feed into our decision-making in the future over the needs of residents.”

Invented by academics in the late 1980s and nurtured in Germany in the 1990s, the building standard takes a ‘fabric first’ approach to construct dwellings that stay cool in summer and warm in winter. According to the Building Research Establishment, there are now around 30,000 Passivhaus buildings worldwide, with examples in every major European country, as well as Australia, China, Japan, Russia, Canada, the US, South America, and even Antarctica.

Still, uptake in the UK has been slow. Primrose Park is not only unique in Plymouth, but it is one of the largest Passivhaus developments in the country.

Andrew Lawrie, head of development at 16,000-home PCH, oversaw the day-to-day inception of the scheme – from developing the proposals, to identifying funding and inking contracts. He concedes that Primrose Park would unlikely have happened “if PCH had been purely focused on receipts”.

Primrose Park properties cost about £11,000 more to build on average when compared with new builds using traditional approaches, he says, although this figure includes work needed to take into account the site’s unusual terrain. And neither mortgage lenders nor estate agents recognise the investment.

It may sound good in principle to developers but it is currently not good for their profits.

And in the past, UK developers had no reason to pursue Passivhaus. The government had sought to set its own building codes that required sustainable homes.

"In the past, UK developers had no reason to pursue Passivhaus."

Since that has fallen by the wayside in the drive to build as many new homes as possible, some developers are now seeking out eco benchmarks and experimenting with standards that are certifiable.

So why is Plymouth taking the lead? In April 2017, the Local Government Association (LGA) highlighted the desperate need for affordable housing in the city: house prices were six times the average income, and research found that many Plymothians were financially unable to save even £100 a month towards a deposit, putting homeownership beyond the reach of many.

But the LGA also highlighted the approach the council has been taking to address these concerns. Under its Plan for Homes, launched in 2013 and revisited in 2016, the local authority pledged to build 1,000 homes by 2021, fund and support innovative social housing schemes, and leverage private investment to address the dearth of affordable homes.

The exterior of homes at the Primose Park Passivhaus development

The scheme is part of the authority’s wider bid to revitalise a city that over past decades has slowly lost its status as a Royal Navy dockyard, its airport, its pier and much of its civic pride.

And it was under the plan that the land for Primrose Park, on the site of a former school, was made available. Previously scoped by private developers, the elevated terrain of the site meant huge retaining walls and bespoke drainage would be required and as such could not accommodate the density of the homes required to turn a profit.

So in 2016, Plymouth Council invited social landlords in the city to submit proposals to develop the land for affordable housing. And the invitation expressed the authority’s specific interest in eco and Passivhaus schemes, putting a price tag on the land of just £1.

“That gave us the opportunity and inspiration to look at housing standards such as Passivhaus that we might not have otherwise,” says Mr Lawrie.

Not only did PCH’s Primrose Park proposals win the support of Plymouth Council, but £2.7m in subsidy from the Homes and Communities Agency.

Passiv resistance 2

A modern fitted kitchen in one of the properties

Despite the land and external funding being available, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing at PCH over the numbers, says Mr Lawrie. The rigorous demands of Passivhaus construction require precision planning prior to ground being broken. That meant PCH would have to commit up to £400,000 to the design work without any real certainty that a brick would ever be laid.

“That’s a risk we hadn’t encountered before with traditionally constructed developments,” says Mr Lawrie. “But Passivhaus fitted with our development criteria and ‘green agenda’ and in the end it met all our development criteria in terms of funding, so we went ahead,” he says.

Key to the success of the development was the support of Passivhaus veterans in the form of Warm, a locally based Passivhaus consultancy, and Mitchell Architects. The two organisations had previously worked together on schemes in Devon and Cornwall. Not only did they help assuage fears over the financial commitment and help sell the idea to the board at PCH, but they have also briefed construction and maintenance teams and potential residents on the ambitions of Passivhaus outcomes, and their roles in helping to meet them.

"With Passivhaus, each stage of construction has to be assessed, photographed, documented and then certified by an independent body," Chris Herron

“Adopting Passivhaus is a real learning curve and requires a complete change in mindset,” says Mr Lawrie. It is a learning curve perhaps best described by Primrose Park’s site manager Chris Herron, who works for Exeter-based construction firm Mi-Space, which won the tender for Primrose Park in August 2016 and is currently putting the final touches to the last properties.

Mi-Space had experience of Passivhaus developments, but for Mr Herron it was a first. While the contract was signed in August that year, work only commenced in November after a period of pre-start planning, site set-up and design finalisation.

“On a traditional build, you start with an outline of the development, but much of the problem-solving is done on site,” he explains. “What I discovered very quickly was that Passivhaus requires each detail of the build to be planned precisely in advance down to the smallest detail.

“And where traditionally a development is signed off on completion, with Passivhaus, each stage of construction has to be assessed, photographed, documented and then certified by an independent body associated to the Passive House Institute in Germany. Only then can you can move forward. That is a whole new discipline.”

But Mr Herron is also very clear that the process delivers dividends. “You have greater control over a build,” he says. “It means every aspect of construction is tied down before you start: the materials, supply chain and price. And the close monitoring means that quality is maintained. It’s guaranteed all the way through. I’ve loved it – everyone got on board.”

Passiv resistance 3

The site during construction

Karl Parsons, Passivhaus designer at Warm, says the properties are of a traditional masonry and tile construction. It is how those materials are put together to create airtight environments and how they are ventilated and heated that defines how they deliver on the ecological ambitions.

For Mr Parsons, the big difference between Passivhaus and a standard build is that these components are carefully aligned to minimise wasteful heat transfer and manage solar gain. As such, materials such as traditional steel beams that leak warmth and are catalysts for mould – as they create extremes of temperature that cause condensation – have been designed out; while the property is wrapped in an airtight envelope of insulation, and windows and doors are positioned to capture the warmth of the sun as it sits low in the sky in winter, but shade the interior of the property from its glare in summer.

While the materials are traditional, at the heart of each property is the mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) unit, hidden in the airing cupboard. This acts as the lungs of the property and recycles up to 90% of heat – a set standard for Passivhaus certification.

"Social landlords have become interested since the government certification scheme for green housing was abolished in 2015"

The MVHR removes air from the bathrooms and kitchens, where most of the interior odours and moisture build up, while simultaneously delivering fresh, filtered air to the bedrooms and living spaces, where occupants spend most of their time.

Mr Parsons rejects the idea that Passivhaus homes are more expensive to build, saying that upfront costs do not take account of the savings made by getting developments right first time, the control over the build, or the benefits of the high-spec construction that create affordable, healthy and comfortable living environments.

According to Richard White, director at Mitchell Architects, social landlords have become interested since the government certification scheme for green housing was abolished in 2015. “Organisations have realised that you can’t have a regulation or a condition that refers to a code that no longer exists, so they are looking for a standard that meets many of that code’s outcomes and aspirations,” he points out. “Rather than being a specialist approach, it should be a standard approach. It’s good for the environment, it’s good for people’s health and it tackles the dreaded thing of fuel poverty.”

In the case of Primrose Park’s most recent arrival, Mr White is preaching to the converted. “I didn’t know what Passivhaus was all about when I first saw the property. But why wouldn’t you build properties this way?” says Ms Shepherd. “One of the best features of the house is its heating and ventilation system being airtight. We are able to breathe fresh, filtered air day-in and day-out in our home without having to open windows, and I no longer have to keep the heating on 24/7 to keep warm. I’d just like to thank PCH for giving my daughter a very beautiful home.”

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