Context and Future Climate: A Single House Case Study

A very low carbon house in urban Nottingham. Designed for possible future climates, it exploits context to reduce energy usage. Close to public transport, services and shops, the house is live-work-grow. An engineered timber frame with heavy floors, zoned planning, sunspaces, and passive ventilation, it incorporates the use of a mass heat storage/buffer wall using recycled ecover bottles. The building recovers rainwater and has a composting toilet to fertilise the garden. Energy is generated by a 3.38kW solar sunshade. A solar thermal system provides hot water. This is backed up by GSHP which provides space heating. The GSHP runs through an aquifer which also provides irrigation water. A computer control system is employed. Appliances are few, AA rated with no refrigerator. Low energy light sources, LED and photo-luminescent strips are used. The design of the house extends adjacent brick terraces and insulates them. This gives an overall carbon footprint of -8,202kgC02/yr The paper will describe the project and explore the use of context. It discusses the passive approach and predicted energy use. It will describe future monitoring and study.