Proudly Passive in Hove

PROUDLY PASSIVE

Sam Cartwright and James Heath have created a home that ticks multiple boxes – built to ultra-low energy standards, and housing three generations in style

HOME TRUTHS

LOCATION: Hove, East Sussex

THE OWNERS: Sam Cartwright and James Heath

THE PROPERTY: Contemporary, new build of closed-panel timber frame

The house is shielded from the road by gabions, and also a number of pine trees, which are protected under a tree preservation order. The façade is given lively visual interest thanks to its different angles and materials – the deep overhangs are also there to prevent overheating inside R elocating for a new job was the simple reason that led Sam Cartwright and James Heath to move to the south coast, but they weren’t expecting to build the distinctive, modern fourstorey, low-energy dwelling they now find themselves living in. Having adored their Georgian home in Manchester, their sights were originally set on a fantastic period property in Brighton

The woodburner in the living area has a back boiler – 8kW goes into heating the hot water tank, backing up the solar thermal panels, and 2kw heats the room. The ‘painting’ above the fireplace is actually the TV

We decided, let’s do something completely different. Let’s go modern

and Hove, where Sam had a new position at the local university.

In a city known for its handsome squares and Regency villas, in theory, they should have been spoilt for choice. But nothing they viewed within their budget quite matched up to what they had in their previous home. “We couldn’t find anything as nice as our place in Manchester, so we decided, rather than settle for something not quite good enough, let’s do something completely different. Let’s go modern. Let’s build something,” said Sam.

With the clock ticking on her new job starting, the couple found a dormer bungalow in a good location in Hove that definitely wasn’t love at first sight, but had the potential to be something really special. “Sam’s requirement was for a good-sized garden; mine was for a garage. This had both,” explained James.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH Having moved in, they began to think about what the possibilities were for the house’s future. “We moved down and within a few months we had interviewed nine or 10 architects, and they almost all agreed that the best thing to do was knock it down and start again rather than adding extra floors and extending,” said Sam. They invited two of those to work up some ideas for a four-bed, 250 square metre contemporary home: in terms of style, Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld’s Schröder House, an icon of the 1920s modern movement, was one of the references that the couple cited as the kind of thing they liked.

KITCHEN The couple’s joiner worked wonders making all the cabinetry fit around some of the kitchen’s odd angles. For example, the island is a funnel shape – the cabinetry was off the peg, and the joiner made it fit before a granite company came to cut the wrap-around worktop in the right shape James himself took more of a hand in designing the house, creating a cardboard model and handing it over to one of the architects

Overheating is always a danger when building a highly insulated home with large south-facing windows, and Sam and James’s passive house expert expressed concern that their house could get roasting hot. In summer, the balconies and overhangs at the front of the house (which is south facing) help protect the inside from the worst of it, but in spring and autumn, when the sun is lower, there was a real danger of overheating. Guided by the Passive House Institute’s Passive House Planning Package (essentially a complex spreadsheet used to calculate the energy efficiency of a building), it was decided to make some of the windows smaller, while some windows had external blinds added. The blinds are made from woven nylon mesh and automatically close when there’s a danger of overheating, but can also be overridden at the touch of a button inside. Thanks to this intervention, the initial fears that the house could get too hot have thankfully proved unfounded.

A large roof terrace is accessed off the ‘belvedere’, a room at the top of the house. The solar PV and solar thermal panels are housed on the terrace and roof

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ATRIUM/HALLWAY The hallway is large, light-filled and dramatic, with timber clad steel staircases running at perpendicular angles. James, an engineer, came up with the idea for the staircases, inspired by the work of artist MC Escher

In the end, James himself took more of a hand in designing the house, creating a cardboard model and handing it over to one of the architects, who finessed it and added some interest to the front facade. By this time, the project’s ambitions were getting bigger: James was in the process of selling his business, and this meant that both the budget and the scale of the project could be pushed further. The possibility of building an annexe for James’s dad, who has Alzheimer’s and needed a greater level of care, also entered the picture.

The plans were initially rejected, with objections filed from neighbours about the size and character of the house – but under the local authority’s rules, the case had to go to committee because there had been so many

expressions of support to counter the objections. The plans were eventually passed, with the fact that this was going to be a highly energy efficient home for three generations working in their favour. “One of the objections was that it was too modern, but if you look around, there’s no vernacular around here. There isn’t a style to fit in with,” recalled Sam. GOING PASSIVE With planning secured, the project went on the back burner for at least a year while James continued commuting to Manchester and had his head down working on the transition period as his company was handed over. When the time was right, the couple started to think about how they were going to get their plans out of the ground. Having decided on a passive house approach, they appointed a building designer that specialised in this type of build, Jim

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Miller, who could deliver the expertise they needed in low-energy buildings. A few elements were tweaked to ensure that the building could work as a passive house, such as reducing the size of some of the windows and adding automatic external blinds, both measures to reduce overheating.

It was Jim who suggested building using a factory-built closed-frame timber system. “I kind of felt more comfortable with blockwork,” said James, “but it is harder to get it air-tight to passive house standards. This looked like a cost-effective, predictable way of getting something built.”

They almost all agreed that the best thing to do was knock it down and start again

MASTER BATHROOM The master bedroom’s ensuite is shared with daughter Georgina’s bedroom. It’s a big room, and James and Sam have arranged the plumbing so it can be split down the middle when Georgina gets older. When the lights are turned on, both doors automatically lock. The basin vanity unit is an antique cabinet bought from eBay

• Have you really got time to do this? We both worked part-time during the build and it was still so, so hard. • James is an engineer by profession, and I don’t know how we would have managed without that knowledge. • Plan, plan and plan some more! Pick your door knobs, plan your kitchen, decide on door heights – even before you’ve started digging foundations.

You will thank yourself for it. • Put your laundry room upstairs. It’s where you make all of your laundry!

Sam and James contracted a building company on a cost-plus basis: instead of giving them a fixed-price quote, the builder handed over all the receipts and labour costs every two weeks, and the couple paid him that figure plus a fixed percentage of those costs. This kind of contract requires a good deal of trust between builder and homeowner – the worst-case scenario is that there is no incentive for the contractor to get the job done on time and on budget, but in this case it worked perfectly, and the relationship was rocksolid throughout the process. “I think it got us the build we wanted, at the quality we wanted, not too over the top, but not cutting corners and

MASTER BEDROOM A serene white and grey colour scheme has been used in the master bedroom

This looked like a cost-effective, predictable way of getting something built

GUEST BEDROOM The south-facing guest bedroom has a balcony that creates a deep overhang, as well as automatic external blinds – both measures to avoid overheating

at a reasonable price without too much stress.”

Where it made sense, James also took a few of the really big costs out of the builders hands to avoid paying the additional percentage, such as the fabrication of the timberclad steel stairs, which run perpendicular to one another, rising up through the atrium as you walk in the door which is one of the house’s undeniable highlights.

ROOM FOR EVERYONE The scale of the house is impressive, with James’s dad’s self-contained flat on the ground floor, along with a guest bedroom and a plant-room/workshop. The first floor consists of

an entirely open-plan U-shaped space which houses the kitchen, dining area and two living areas. The next floor has the main bedrooms and finally at the top of the house a space that the couple call the belvedere which is used as a hobby room for James and the couple’s daughter Georgina and enjoys sea views in the distance.

The belvedere steps out on to a terrace where there is an array of solar thermal and PV panels. The solar thermal provides sufficient hot water (stored in a 1,500-litre tank) between about March and October, while the living room’s 10kW Firepower woodburner has a back boiler, with 8kW feeding into the hot water system and 2kW used for heating the room. A small gas boiler acts as a back-up to these options.

FINISHING OFF & TAKING STOCK Snagging issues with the mechanical and electrical systems took much longer than the couple would have wanted, with James pouring his own time into fixing them, using his experience as an engineer to sort everything out. He also took the lead on programming the house’s SmartThings home automation system, which controls the lighting, blinds and the heating too.

Sam is adamant that she wouldn’t self-build again on account of how stressful the whole process was. “It was utterly exhausting. The whole build was full-on, but in the last few months, every waking minute that we weren’t at work, we were making decisions that I knew I was ill-equipped to make. It’s not an experience I’d wish to repeat but thankfully nothing went catastrophically wrong.”

The couple admit that it took a while for the house to feel like home, but that shouldn’t detract from the fantastic end result. Light, spacious and superefficient, it has a high-quality finish and some daring design features. It’s also packed with practical elements that have obviously been very thoroughly thought through to simplify and streamline everyday life. Things such as having the washer and drier on the same floor as the bedrooms, so there’s no need to lug laundry up and down the stairs, or the way the doors automatically lock when the light goes on in the bathroom. Now that the stress of the build is over, Sam and James still have the odd issue to deal with, but thankfully they have diminished to a much more manageable scale – like how to get Marshmallow the cat to use their special, high-tech passive house cat-flap. l Photos: Bruce Hemming Text: Emily Brooks