Bournemouth Christchurch & Poole Council: low-energy homes reduce residents' costs

To achieve this, we knew we had to approach the building ‘fabric’ in a different way. If we could design a building that needed less energy to heat it in the first place, we knew we would be somewhere closer to achieving our goal.

The council’s asset management plan provides a commitment to modernise our housing stock where required and where possible to reduce future maintenance costs.

We looked at innovative solutions to deliver energy-efficient and sustainable homes at a few of our sites, for example Luckham Road, Craigmoor Avenue and Rochester Road, and we introduced Passivhaus principles to help reduce fuel poverty for our tenants. We also boosted regeneration opportunities, upgraded our existing council stock and increased the number of family homes.

We soon found that building to a PassivHaus standard proved the most reliable for a ‘fabric first’ approach and in 2018 we started work on a terrace of three houses at Cunningham Crescent which were built to PassivHaus ‘Classic’ standard. This project introduced to some major technical advances like the introduction of an MVHR (Ventilation Heat Recovery) system, much higher levels of insulation, triple glazing and possibly the most important element, a very high level of air tightness (so as small an amount of air as possible would leak from the building). We also built these homes using a clay block system without cavity walls.

We learnt a huge amount from this project and started to introduce some of this learning into our standard build homes, bringing these up to a much higher specification.

We then built a mixed development of flats and houses at Luckham Road, again to PassivHaus ‘Classic’ standard and again using the clay block system. This time however, we started to use alternatives to gas central heating. On this project we trialled ‘ground source heat pumps’. From this point forward, we stopped installing gas to new homes, installing instead air sources heat pumps’ (ASHP) so not only are residents benefitting from a highly efficient building, when they do need the small amount of heat energy required to warm the house, the cost is much lower.

We recently also completed a flat development which used a timber frame construction, this also achieved a very high level of air tightness which showed we can apply this to multiple smaller dwellings. 

However, the real winner in this development was the use of a combined ASHP and MVHR all in one, the bills for the residents here have been phenomenally low with one flat spending circa £250.00 on heating and hot water for a whole year. The system also cleans the air as it enters the building, giving further benefits to the resident. To meet employer requirements, contain project costs and provide incredibly cheap running costs, CWT invested and trained our own plumbers to install the heating and ventilation system as well as train our carpenters to implement Timber Frame Construction. Once more we proved we could build efficiently and meet BCP commitments to our communities, introducing Modern Method of Construction (MMC) as the timber frame.

We have now come full circle and build in a traditional manner (ie using brick and block with a cavity) but introduce many of the PassivHaus elements. For example, with air tightness, we have developed a method of coating the face of the inner block with a material that creates a very high level of air tightness and we're now achieving the same air tightness readings as we have been on the previous PassivHaus ‘Classic’ projects but, at a lower cost.

This feedback is a great example of our partnership working to deliver improved outcomes and savings, providing new affordable homes that offer great, safe places to live which help to improve the quality of life for our customers.