All Trussed Up

The whole team rolled up their sleeves to help the adjacent village hall recently by re-decorating the outside of the hall as a thank you for their patience whilst we disrupt their car park and access. Luckily the sun shone, and the brilliant white paint caused several instances of reflected sunburn! There should be some photos on the gallery page.

The build is proceeding well, with the roof trusses going on to plots 1 - 6 and 11 - 14. Plots 7 - 10 will shortly follow. The large overhang on the eaves required for additional shading has been designed in two parts to break up the mass a little and there has been some discussion on site regarding the best fixing methods, but that is all now pressing ahead. We are wondering whether to fit some of the eaves insulation during the roofing process to ensure a quality fit and to make sure there are no gaps.

We had the first of a series of open meetings to show interested parties around on Tuesday, (2nd Nov), and the contractor kindly laid on guided tours after we (Parsons + Whittley) and Inbuilt had given presentations in the village hall on the principals of Passivhaus and their interpretation at Wimbish.

The windows should be arriving soon, and when these are fitted we plan an early pressure test to see how we are doing. You wouldn't believe the discussion around the window fixing detail, although for those who have built Passiv before, you probably would! The remaining membranes, tapes and grommets all need to be fixed pre-plaster so that we can detect any weak spots in the strategy.

Weekly design meetings on the site are helping to resolve issues before they arise, although the tea and biscuit supply to these meetings is taking far too low a priority in my view.

Chris Parsons
Parsons + Whittley Architects

UK Passivhaus Open Days

The Wimbish Passivhaus development will be open on Friday 12^th November as part of the first ever UK Passivhaus Open Days.

The construction site will be open for pre-booked visits at the following times: 11am, 12noon, 2pm and 3pm.

Advance booking only through Jane Barnes Jane.Barnes@davislangdon.com

Visitors will need to bring their own safety equipment (boots and hard hats).

Up to floor joist

As it took a while to get the website and blog up and running, my first blog comes as we await the first floor PC slabs for the flats.  For historical purposes, 400mm of Dow Floormate was placed without difficulty beneath the 300mm RC rafts, and the insulation is now all nicely wrapped up and backfilled. All the service penetrations were installed ready to receive air tight grommets and the blockwork commenced.

Most Passivhaus’s in the UK are built by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, but at Wimbish we are trying to build them in a normal commercial volume house building environment. That means getting your everyday subcontractor to understand the process and the importance of quality and detailing that wouldn’t normally apply in this environment.

Initially this included making sure the Aircrete thin joint blockwork was laid fair face to the outside rather than the inside, as the insulation has to be fitted later with no air gaps between the sheets.

Our air tightness barrier is to be the wet plaster but where we pass through the first floor void the ground and first floor plaster skins are linked by a Solitex Plus airtight membrane. Initially we had proposed PC slabs even in the houses because of the ease of obtaining this air tight seal, but value engineering changed this to timber posi-joists which present a few more challenges, particularly with restraint straps and in the corners. Several mock ups and some significant time and effort on site has been expended to ensure this is properly placed and installed.

So, the PC slabs should arrive on Monday for the 6 flats and then we can speed ahead to getting the roof trusses on. The next passivhaus task will be the air tight membranes at ceiling level, and then maybe a preliminary air test before plaster to see how we are doing.

Chris Parsons

Parsons + Whittley Architects

17^th October 2010

Site Visit Opportunity

Hastoe Housing Association in conjunction with the project team are facilitating a series of open events at the Wimbish Passivhaus site. The open events will provide a brief presentation followed by a walk around the site. Time for questions and answers will be at the end. The events are free but restricted to 15 attendees per event and a maximum of 2 people per organisation. The event bookings are on a first come first serve basis. For enquiries and bookings please contact umaccariello@hastoe.com

Upcoming events:
Tuesday 2 November 1.30pm to 3pm
Tuesday 7 December 1.30pm to 3pm
Tuesday 4 January 1.30pm to 3pm

Ulrike Maccariello, Development Manager, Hastoe

Welcome!

Welcome to the Wimbish Passivhaus blog.  Along with our partners, we hope you find the information here and on our website a useful insight into this exciting example of how innovation and advanced building techniques can work for  rural affordable housing.  Hastoe is committed to the climate change protection agenda and we will learn a lot from this scheme – we intend to share this across the sector and take what we learn forward, to reduce the carbon footprint of all our new homes.  We look forward to receiving your comments.

Sue Chalkley, Chief Executive, Hastoe Housing Association.