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Devon's Oak Meadow Development 'Very Good'
Posted: 03/03/2006
Devon and Cornwall Housing Association deserve praise for their Oak Meadow development in South Molton. The 35-unit development achieved an EcoHomes Very Good rating, the ‘Best Social Housing Development’ category at the NationalHomeBuilder Design Awards 2005 and a Green Apple Award.
It is well known that grouping houses in terraces reduces surface heat losses, but it also enables efficiencies in timberframe prefabrication and construction, and designing the houses to face south and south-west gains benefits from passive and active solar gain.
The architects, Gale and Snowden, have developed the registered Twin Frame system, which enables a doublethickness timber-frame wall and roof construction to be prefabricated offsite using a panel form of construction, which provides high levels of insulation and reduces thermal bridging.
Roofs are better insulated than walls, and the room-in-the-roof design maximises the use of space in the building, reducing the area of wall and heat loss in the building. Triple-glazed timber windows and doors minimise heat losses. As a result their running costs are extremely economical, with very low fuel bills and low carbon-dioxide emissions.
Similarly, water-efficient appliances and shared rainwater collection results in low water bills. Even the landscape has been designed to high ecological standards, with wildlife corridors and the creation of habitat. Every home has private garden space, fruiting trees and Devon hedge banks.
Green Building Press
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