AWARD Best Residential Property in Warwickshire
Project Info:
We were approached by the owner Peter Stephenson who was building a new Barn like home along with the Developer Housestyle Countrywide Ltd. Be Green had been recommended by Nicholls Boreholes, Nicholls had drilled two boreholes for a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) for another installer that pulled out from completing the work after the boreholes were drilled.
8kw Vaillant Ground Source Heat Pump
Under-floor heating throughout
Constant Domestic hot water
Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery
Whole house Background Comfort Cooling
As a result Be Green was appointed to install the complete sustainable heating and cooling package. Our remit was too designed, installed and commissioned a Heating and Comfort Cooling system into this new contemporary home. A complete eco (renewables) package will significantly reduce the heating and cooling bills, carbon footprint as well as the impacted on the environment.
The house is 292m² and over two floors, because of the efficiencies of the building it only had heat losses of 25w/m or a total of less than 8kW, so the home can be heated using less energy than your toaster. Because of the low energy requirements, it enabled Be-Green to design the system using the using the two x 80 meter deep boreholes already drilled.
For heating and cooling Be Green installed a new generation of Vaillant 8kW GSHP (the first in the country) as well as the Hot water and Buffer tanks, these have been located in the garage and plant room on the first floor
The house has Underfloor Heating (UFH) throughout; all designed for a low flow temperature of 35° at -3 via the floating condensing, or is controlled via an outside thermostat. This ensures the GSHP always provides the correct amount of heat ensuring the GSHP is always working at the optimum efficiencies no matter what the weather conditions outside.
Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery (MVHR) has been installed so the house can breathe, allowing the home to be built to be as air tight as possible, this will enable the property achieve the highest efficiencies. The clean filtered air makes the homes feel fresh and clean as well as enhance the properties comfort and ambiance with controlled gentle air movement throughout the home. The MVHR is designed to achieve approximately one third of an air change per hour whist running at around 50 to 60% of its capacity during winter. Adopting this philosophy within the design reduces possible noise issues, lowers energy consumption and increase the heat exchange within the unit.
Comfort Cooling, running the MVHR at half its capacity in winter enables us to easily increase the air movement in summer for greater cooling effectiveness. To enhance the cooling effect the incoming air can be chilled further by installing a cooling coil to the supply air vents. It’s cooled by connecting the cooling coil to the borehole pipes connected to the GSHP. So with the GSHP off, by simply circulating this chilled fluid from the ground (temperature is approximately of 5 to 10°c) and running it up to the cooling coil, this will now significantly cool the incoming air with virtually no running costs.
So what Peter has achieved is a well-built air tight home with a sustainable environmentally friendly heating and background comfort cooling system with a gentle and continual filtered air movement that’s either heated or chilled. This makes the home feel fresh and clean and makes it a wonderful place to live in. The whole system creates a delightful atmosphere and ambiance that will also give you that that feel good factor of knowing you’re doing your bit to help the environment.
Technology Used in Project:
