Sustainability Report

Sustainability information was provided by Jamie Mack, Associate / Project Architect at Loader Monteith.

Embodied carbon strategies

• One of the most effective ways architecture can reduce a building’s carbon footprint is by building smaller. This house uses a tight, highly functional plan to achieve a usable internal floor area of 120 square metres. By comparison, the UK Government’s English Housing Survey 2018–19 reports that the average detached home in England has an internal floor area of 149 square metres.
• According to the RICS Whole Life Carbon Assessment, average embodied carbon ranges between 450 and 650 kilograms of CO2e per square metre. Reducing floor area therefore has a direct impact on embodied carbon, demonstrating how efficient planning can lower a building’s overall carbon footprint.
• Reclaimed stone sourced directly from the site has been used in the construction, reducing the embodied carbon associated with transport, quarrying, and processing.
• The primary structure of the building is timber and all areas not clad in stone are finished with timber cladding. As a renewable material, timber contributes to a reduced embodied carbon profile compared to more carbon-intensive construction materials.

Operational emissions strategies 

• The house incorporates thick, highly insulated external walls that exceed the backstop requirements of Scottish building regulations. Space heating is provided by an air source heat pump coupled with underfloor heating. This system is more efficient than traditional radiator-based systems and is well suited to the lower flow temperatures produced by an air source heat pump.
• The heating strategy is supplemented by a wood-burning stove, providing resilience during peak demand and a low-carbon secondary heat source.
• The house achieves an EPC rating of band B (85). By contrast, the average EPC rating in Scotland is band D (59).

Alongside the decision to raise the building’s finished floor level, careful consideration was given to ensuring that elements below this level would not suffer irreversible damage during a flood event. As the primary structure of the building is timber, it was essential that all timber elements were kept above the predicted flood risk level to ensure the building’s resilience.