House, Dalmeny road – Martins Camisuli

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Project
House, Dalmeny Road
Location
Islington, North London

The brief for this project was to create an open plan kitchen and living room opening onto the garden, internally refurish the whole house and extend into the loft space.

The ambition was also to analyse and implement all possible environmental solutions that would help minimize energy consumption.

We followed a pragmatic and methodical process to help minimise energy usage, including:

• Properly insulating the whole house.
• Ensure low air permeability through natural ventilation to minimise heat loss.
• Decommission the gas supply to reduce carbon emissions.
• Install photo voltaic panels on the roof
• Install an air source heat pump (ASHP) in the garden
• Install underfloor heating throughout the house to maximise ASHP efficiency.
• Install a Mechanical Heat Recovery System in the basement.
• Ensure all lighting and electrical appliances are as energy efficient as possible

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Project
House, Dalmeny Road
Location
Islington, North London

Structure
In order to create the large open plan layout on ground floor a series of steel portal frames need to be installed to support all the existing walls and floors
Four different steel portals support the rear elevation to the main building, the first floor rear extension and the single storey rear extension
Due to the change in levels between the front and rear part of the building, the first portal has a hanging struture to sup- port the rear extension beam
Glazing is maximised on the walls and roof with a fully glazed lightwell in the middle of the building
The attic floor is supported by two steels spanning between the two flanking structural walls

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Project
House, Dalmeny Road
Location
Islington, North London

High insulation and air tightness
All external walls were insulated with 100mm rigid phenolic board installed between timber studwork
The new roof was built with 200mm thick insulation and the existing roof was upgraded with the same thickness of insulation
This represents a good compromise between minimum buidling control requirements and best practice principles
So for example, external wall construction, Part L sets the minimum standard for new building fabric elements aminimumU-valueof 0.26W/(m2K)
Passiv Haus recommends a value of 0.1 W/(m2K)
The new floor construction to the rear extension was also highly insulated with 150mm rigid insulation below the un- der floor heating.
Efficient air tightness is achieved by carefull detailing of standard building fabiric build ups and crucially the interface and detail between the different elements of the building

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Project
House, Dalmeny Road
Location
Islington, North London

Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP)

In order to de-carbonize our energy consumption we need to move away from fosil fuels and reduce our dependence on gas.
The current direction is to go electric for both heating
and hot water.
The ASHP offers a very good Coeffiicient of Production (CoP)
Declared values by manufacturers are between 3 and 5. This means that for unit of elctricty used we obtain three to five units of heating energy depending on the
seasonal conditions.
The important factor about ASHP is that it is more efficient at lower heating temperature levels
This means that under floor heating will be more cost effective than traditional radiators.
In this case the ASHP was installed in the garden
In most cases the ASHP can be installed under Permitted Development (PD) rights.
Installation should comply with MCS 020, Microgeneration Installation Standard
Grants are available through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme:
https://www.find-government-grants.service.gov.uk/grants/ boiler-upgrade-scheme-1
Link to MCS Website for MCS supporting documentation: https://mcscertified.com/find-an-installer/

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Project
House, Dalmeny Road
Location
Islington, North London

Mechanical Ventilated Heat Recovery (MVHR)
The next step in maximizing heating efficiency and minimiz- ing energy use is to avoid wasting all the warm air by simply opening the windows and loosing al the heat
An MVHR system uses a heat plate exchange to take out the energy from the stail air we want to get rid of and transfer the heat into the fresh air supply to the property
Integrating a full ducted supply and extract system into an existing property is quite a challenge
In this property we installed the MVHR plant in the basement.
Warm fresh air ventilation is provided to all rooms. Extraction is done from all bathrooms and kitchen.
There is an option to provide background cooling through the system with an additional component.
Grants are available through the Energy Saving Trust: https://energysavingtrust.org.uk

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Project
House, Dalmeny Road
Location
Islington, North London

Photo voltaic panels

A 5.5 KWp array was acheived with 16 panels distributed on the different parts of the roof on the building
The panels installed on the existing pitch roof are integrated with the slate tile
The panles insatlled on the flat roof have an aluminium frame support layed over the green roof
The orientation, East to West is not ideal for the panel ori- entation. An optimizer is installed on each panel to maxi- mise the efficiency of each element irespective of the angle at which they are installed
A 10 KWh battery pack in the basement stores the electric- ity produced during the day
The prediction is the house will be autonomous during at least eight months of the year depending on the weather
The pay-back for the installed system is predicted to be between seven and eight years
Link to UK Solar Energy: https://uksolargeneration.co.uk

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Project
House, Dalmeny Road
Location
Islington, North London

All systems integrated together

So the finished product is quite a complex overlay of different elements doing very different things
It is only by doing a complete refurbishment and
stripping out the interiors that a complex web of cables and ducting can be integrated cleanly.
In order to conceal all the services including ducts, risers and manifolds paths have to be found and hidden in the building fabric
The result is succesful in integrating modern sustainable principles within a period property
Most importantly though creating a modern and elegant home respectful of the building’s heritage
The client is very happy with the outcome of the project