SI Sealy designs the building services for exemplar sustainable home

Building Services Designers, S I Sealy, has designed the building services for an exemplar sustainable refurbishment of a typical terraced house on Edith Avenue for Manchester City Council and Mosscare Housing Ltd.

This house was a rather tired 2 bedroom end terrace which pre-dated 1919. It suffered excessive heat losses and poor living conditions. The property was completely stripped bare, the building fabric was improved with high quality thermal insulation and the air permeability was reduced significantly. Solar water heating and small scale photovoltaic electricity generation were incorporated into the refurbished building.

The CO² emissions of the property prior to the refurbishment equated to 98.33Kg/m²/year, following our refurbishment the emissions reduced to 17.43Kg/m²/year, which is 37% below the current building regulations Part L requirements for new builds. This is comparable to achieving Code for Sustainable
Homes Level 3.

The refurbishment also involved installing an energy monitoring system which would normally be included in a commercial building.

Danny Madden, the Mechanical Engineer responsible for this project comments:

“The energy monitoring system allows us to remotely monitor the energy consumption via the internet anywhere in the world. This data will be recorded over a two year period to enable a true assessment of the energy savings achieved.

“We have taken a rather tired 2 bedroom end terrace and created a smart, stylish, well insulated and attractive house that will cost very little to heat, and has no more controls than a conventional house.”