Springfield Meadows- Greencore Construction
Project Details
Project - Springfield Meadows
Sector - Commercial
Technology - Timber
Company - Greencore Construction
Project Overview
We’re living in a world where Carbon reduction and minimising our use of energy, especially fossil fuels is paramount. The cost of living is increasing, and energy bills are on the rise. Our client brief was to make this the most sustainable housing development in in the country by achieving zerocarbon footprint & net-zero energy in use for both the private and the affordable houses. Phase 2 of the project exceeded net-zero carbon as we’ve been able to make the houses better-than-zero embodied carbon & net-zero energy in use.
We worked with Bioregional’s ‘One Planet Living’ framework to achieve their Global Leader certification, this also includes the softer parts of developing housing including ‘Health and Happiness’ as well as ‘Culture & Community’. We also wanted our residents to have low energy bills, so we built everything to Passivhaus thermal performance standards and used PV panels, triple glazed windows and MVHR (Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery).
These features make for excellent air tightness, and excellent thermal efficiency meaning low energy bills. The MVHR system also filters the air which is great for health and particularly allergies such as hayfever. We use our Biond Building system, an innovative closed panel timber frame that is insulated with Lime-Hemp & wood-fibre insulation. The external wall panels lock up 32kg of CO2e/m2 of wall. We use a cross laminated timber system for the upper floors (& any flat roofs) instead of joists.
These lock up 125kg CO2e/m2 of floor or roof. We use cellulose insulation in our pitched roofs & timber/timber products in as many areas as we can. WSP, the leading consultants, recently reviewed one of our Springfield houses to validate our achievement of 'better than zero embodied carbon'. They calculated that this house achieved a whole life embodied carbon of -278KgCO2e/m2 vs an industry average of +1200kgCO2e/m2. In WSP’s carbon audit a ‘typical’ Greencore 100m2 houses is locking up sequestering) an additional 27.8 tonnes of CO2 in the bio-based materials.
In layman’s terms, this means the carbon footprint for the house is - 27.8 tonnes compared to +120T for an average ‘brick-and-block’ house of the same size. The local Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) have designed all of the outdoor spaces and gardens to maximise and improve biodiversity. BBOWT will monitor the wildlife and biodiversity of the project for the next 5 years and report back to the residents. We believe this is currently the most sustainable development in the UK.
