Housing

Fieldways, Hawkhurst, Kent

Fieldways, Hawkhurst, Kent

This house achieves Level 5 under the Code for Sustainable Homes, the first in the area. It provides an important insight into what houses of the future may be like and has been designed to be in keeping with the existing homes in the local area.

Our sustainability and mechanical and electrical engineering expert, Terry Keech, gave a presentation explaining the special features of the house and how he and Town & Country will be able to monitor every aspect of the building's energy use via the internet, together with valuable feedback from the tenants.

Developed in partnership with Denne Construction and calfordseaden, and supported by the Homes & Communities Agency, Fieldways has been used to test and demonstrate the building techniques and technologies that house builders will need to use in the future in order to comply with the future 'Zero Carbon Homes' aspirations. The house has also been developed to look at suitable technologies for use on existing stock housing and how best to install retro fit technologies.

Learning from the individual elements of the scheme in terms of construction and feedback from the residents will be used to inform other projects, including 'retrofit' situations. This low carbon house provides a pleasant place to live, with energy bills that should be considerably lower.

The cost of the overall project has been monitored carefully, and is inevitably higher than would be anticipated for a straight forward Code 5 dwelling, as it has been constructed as a "one-off" demonstration project. However, the lessons learned will be taken forward by the project team and costs significantly reduced for future projects, replicating only those features and products that have proved to be successful, efficient and cost effective.

Key features include:

• Very high levels of insulation;
• Thin joint block work construction (by H+H Celcon)
• Local & sustainably sourced materials;
• Triple glazed timber windows;
• Mechanical ventilation with
• heat recovery;
• Solar electric and solar hot
• water panels;
• A ground source heat pump;
• 'Smart' metering;
• Water efficient fittings;
• Rainwater harvesting and
• permeable paving;
• Natural low toxin paints;
• Lifetime Homes compliant;
• Internal and external recycling facilities.

Our services include:

• Employer's agent;
• Sustainability adviser;
• CDM coordinator;
• Code for Sustainable Homes assessor.

Paul White, Design & Quality Manager at Town and Country said of the event:

"I would like to thank calfordseaden for the excellent organisation of the event and Terry's expertise, support and enthusiasm on the day and over the life of the project. Many thanks to Angela Lemon and the support team for dealing with my questions during the construction phase and managing the site so well. We have received some excellent feedback on the event and for what we have produced"

Rob Pannell, Head of House Building at Zero Carbon Hub said of the event:

"The Hawkhurst scheme is a very credible development with tremendous potential for mass scale re-production -one of the best projects I have seen across the UK to date"