Andy Cane, Building Physics Engineer at Greengauge, shares his thoughts on recent launch of a ground-breaking pattern book for Welsh social housing providers.
Last month I attended the launch of the ambitious Tai ar y Cyd (Homes Together) initiative in Swansea. Developed by 23 Welsh social housing providers, with support from the Welsh Government, the pattern book seeks to develop a streamlined approach for them to deliver homes to the AECB & Passivhaus standard.
It seems such a sensible approach to share the costs of developing designs for 15 house typologies to fast-track the design, tendering and construction process. By simplifying all these specifications and processes into a pattern book the members of Tai ar y Cyd are seeking to keep costs down while also delivering high quality homes for their clients, that are comfortable and cheap to run and have low carbon emissions (both embodied carbon and operational).
It is brilliant that the AECB standard has been selected for the Basic standard and the Passivhaus standard put forward as the Enhanced standard. Certification for both basic and enhanced options is assumed, offering the quality assurance that will be essential for the project to succeed. Read our Guidance on the differences and similarities between the AECB and Passivhaus standards.
The next stage of the Tai ar y Cyd project will be to find development sites to test the pattern book out on. I think the project has the potential to be a huge success and could be an idea that could be rolled out across the UK once it has been tried and tested. I think it has the greatest potential to work at scale to really yield financial benefits, so I hope that the social housing providers develop ambitious projects with it and not just tinker around with small pilot projects.
It’s fantastic to see some of the tried-and-tested features of low-carbon design being deployed at scale: timber construction, highly-efficient thermal envelopes, heat recovery ventilation, heat pumps and solar PV. The fact that social housing providers and contractors can agree on this as a default approach shows just how much the industry has moved on years since the climate emergency declarations.
We congratulate Tai ar y Cyd members on their vision in developing the pattern book project and look forward to seeing how it develops, with the hope that it can encourage even wider take-up in Wales and potentially other parts of the UK.
More information
Tai ar y Cyd is open to all Welsh social housing providers. Find out more and how to join: taiarycyd.cymru
