I am a mechanical engineer with 25 years' experience working in the wind power sector. I recently qualified as a PassivHaus consultant, currently embarking on a retrofit project, bringing my home in Totterdown up to the PassivHaus standard. I have 3 children, who spent their early lives in Bristol, were active in Co-Housing Bristol, currently live in the Courtyards Co-Housing community in Bradford on Avon and love to return for the vibrant life of this exciting city.
At the Eco-village we will be designing warm, comfortable, elegant, draft-free and well ventilated buildings which use almost no energy for heating or air conditioning. Each building will generate electricity in excess of the total energy consumed by the occupants and fabric of the structure during its entire life, from extraction, fabrication & transport of all the materials through its useful lifetime function as a home or office, repair, maintenance, upgrading until its eventual recycling at the end of its life.
To achieve this ambition, all buildings will be independently assessed as satisfying the highest standards currently defined. In practice this would mean either PassifHaus Premium or the Power House standard from Norway. We expect the costs of meeting these standards to be no more than 10-20% above the cost of meeting the requirements of the current UK building regulations. We can justify this extra initial expense because we intend these buildings to be standing in 150 years time, just as has been the case for the majority of the Victorian terraces in Bristol.
Savings of energy use over the life of these buildings will more than compensate for the additional embodied energy of high-performance materials used in the building fabric. The Eco Village will also be able to earn money from the electricity generated on solar panels on the roofs of these buildings. This extra cost of construction depends on how familiar the architects and construction team are with the materials and practices required to meet these standards. The number of skilled tradespeople able to participate in the construction of these energy-positive buildings is increasing every year. Bristol is particularly fortunate to have a number of exemplar projects on which people have learnt the necessary skills. Because of changes in the UK climate, our designs will mitigate not only the demands of heating throughout he winter but also summer cooling and will ensure good indoor air quality, offering year-round comfort and adaptability