quite large, it was only going to accommodate one modest three-bed home, and not the three-garage McMansion (or two) that might otherwise have been built on a plot of this size. Juraj and Joyce were keen to build at the top of the plot, to take maximum advantage of the view. As there is a house behind them, they were limited to a single storey so as not to impinge excessively on their neighbours. The design they settled on was a long, low, timber clad bungalow with a simple corrugated steel roof, the timber to be charred, and the roof painted black – a look Juraj liked, and also one that helped the building recede visually into its surroundings, in line with the Duchy’s preferences. Small detached bungalows inevitably have pretty poor form factors, and with a ratio of 4.6 this one is certainly not ideal for a passive house (see ‘Explained’). But Juraj and Joyce did manage to achieve the standard without appearing to strain either the design or the choice of materials. Straw and timber construction For the build, Juraj was keen to try a modular, prefabricated straw-and-timber system called Ecococon that’s manufactured in Lithuania. “I encountered Ecococon via my friend Bjørn Kierulf in Slovakia, he had been using it for the past five years or so,” he says. “From our point of view, it combines low impact, renewable materials with accuracy
and speed. I had tried to specify this system on previous Architype projects, to no avail, so this was the perfect opportunity to try it out – and we were the first to use the system in the UK.” Although committed to the use of natural materials, and in particular timber (the material most favoured by Architype), Juraj is not keen on the slightly ‘hollow’ finish he feels you sometimes get from timber frame with plasterboard linings. “I wanted to achieve a solid feel to the house if possible. Coming from central Europe I’m quite used to masonry buildings. The clay plaster applied straight on to Ecococon panels creates a really solid wall. Also the Fermacell linings applied to internal partitions are double the density of standard plasterboard, so the building ends up feeling a lot more solid.” Ecococon is a screw-together modular system, comprising wooden frames densely packed with straw to achieve precise sizing, and consistent thermal and moisture properties. End panels and window reveals are faced with 12mm plywood, but otherwise the timber structure does not cross the straw layer, minimising thermal bridging, and enabling the system to achieve passive house certification. Everything in Juraj’s design was sized to fit Ecococon’s standard 600mm and 800mm modules, which proved much more cost-ef-
fective than getting bespoke module sizes made up. The design was all communicated in the SketchUp 3D modelling software, and Ecococon supplied a colour-coded set of build instructions. Structure and insulation To achieve the passive house standard, the insulating performance of roof and walls had to be increased slightly on Ecococon’s standard spec, but this worked well with other aspects of the design. For example, as Juraj and Joyce were building to the passive house standard, the Ecococon system required an airtightness membrane sitting outside the straw layer (so the clay plaster could be applied directly to the straw internally). This in turn
Explained Form factor is the ratio of a building’s total surface area (the walls, roof and ground floor) to its treated floor area. The smaller the form factor, the more efficient the shape of the building and the less surface area from which heat can escape. A form factor of under 3.0 is considered ideal for a passive house. It is usually harder to achieve a good form factor with bungalows, despite their often-simple shape, because they only have one floor.
Inside, the main labour of love was the polished concrete slab – ground by Juraj over an uncountable number of hours.
Photography: Juraj Mikurcik
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