“The parents of a child suffering from chronic asthma told the school of a tangible improvement in their child’s lung function since moving into the new building.” own. The new school building — to include four classrooms, other teaching spaces, plus staff and meeting rooms — would be built with a conventional timber frame system but meet the passive house standard.
This goes hand-in-hand with the council’s responsibility to deliver “community benefits” through its building projects, which are 50% funded by the Welsh Assembly government, he added.
The second curved ‘pod’ building — which would house performance and recreation spaces — would use an innovative and ecological timber frame method known as brettstapel. It would be built to basically the same spec, but without the specific goal of reaching passive house. The old school building would also undergo refit, which was largely cosmetic.
Specifying brettstapel for the Pod building would be highly ecological too. “Brettstapel is a method of solid timber construction using low grade timber that would otherwise end up in pallets, woodchip or fence posts,” project architect George Mikurcik of Architype says. Timber studs are stacked into panels which are held together with hardwood dowels — no nails or glues are used. The panel itself is the final finish, there are no internal linings.
Andrew Tidy, architect at the council, explains that because they weren’t required to reach Breeam or any other green building standard, the local authority “took this opportunity to pilot the passive house standard as a rigorous and prescriptive low energy strategy.” Leading passive house design firm Architype built a name for itself in the education sector with the design of timber frame passive house schools in Wolverhampton. Two of these schools — Oak Meadow and Wilkinson — were previously profiled by Passive House Plus. Both projects featured super-insulated, airtight timber frame structures made in Cork by Irish manufacturer Cygnum.
At an early stage, the project received funding from the timber industry group Wood Knowledge Wales (WKW) to explore the possibility of using low grade Welsh softwood for both structure and cladding. The project would offer “a visual demonstration of the capability and affordability of this low grade timber,” Andrew Tidy says, as well as being aesthetically beautiful.
For these new buildings at Burry Port Community School, design was a collaborative process between Architype and architects at Carmarthenshire County Council. The plan was to construct two buildings, each with an ambitious goal of its
The design team worked closely with wood scientists from WKW. “Welsh timber was at the heart of this project. Our wider goal was to help support and promote the use of Welsh materials and encourage growth and opportunity with the timber industry in Wales.”
For the Pod building, the brettstapel panels were fitted on the outside with 300mm Larsen trusses, which were fully insulated with Warmcel blown cellulose insulation. George Mikurcik says that taking a fabric-first approach with brettstapel was relatively straightforward once the team adopted a clear airtightness strategy. An 18mm layer of OSB applied to the outside of the panels was installed prior to the installation of the Larsen truss insulation zone, and serves as an airtightness and racking layer. “Care is needed on site,” says Mark Smith, director of timber engineering at Cygnum, who manufactured the brettstapel system in their Cork factory. “Brettstapel is like putting together very expensive bespoke delicate timber furniture in a field when it’s raining. Much effort must be made to avoid it becoming marked or stained until the roof is on and the building is watertight.”