ESP and the Code for Sustainable Homes – read with the code summary attached
Ian Abley’s Summary of Code for Sustainable Homes – down load PDF
The challenge for the Enabled Self-Procurement project will be to organise itself around the structure of the Code for Sustainable Homes. Inventing another structure will be redundant, and only add to the plethora of competing design methodologies. The CSH might not be perfect – in fact aspects of it are downright irrational – but by 2008 it will probably be mandatory, and will probably be the framework into which Building Regulations are revised. Any “Enabling Developer” using ESP-SIM will want design decisions made at any stage in the process to be readily seen as a point score against the Code levels. If it were possible – and I am sure it is – the software should show a constant readout of the points being scored and the Code levels being reached, or fallen short of, as the 9 Code categories are addressed in all their contradicting detail. For example the decision to procure a town house type under the Ecology sub-category 9.05 for Building Footprint with an internal floor to ground floor area ratio of 3:1 will probably mean that points for Lifetime Homes under the Health and Well Being sub-category 7.04 will not be available. The Code credits available for the decision to go for a town house are 2 of 9, while Lifetime Homes are 4 of 12. When weighting has been factored into the 4 credits for Lifetime Homes, giving 4.67 points out of 100, the decision to procure the 2 weighted credits for a town house instead results in only 2.67 points being scored.
7.04 Lifetime Homes gives 4 credits from 12 – (4/12) Credits x 14% Weighting = 4.67 Points9.05 Building Footprint 3:1 gives 2 credits from 9 – (2/9) Credits x 12% Weighting = 2.67 Points
That loss of 2 points has to be made up elsewhere. Or the design revised to make a larger ground floor to obtain Lifetime Homes. Like a bungalow. The “Enabling Developer” can toggle between house types to total the overall point score, shown as a running total and on a tabulated check sheet. The ESP-SIM could then assist the process by providing drop down menus of all the detail in each sub-category. If you do that you will of course have achieved something that the Building Research Establishment has spectacularly failed to do: produce a way of understanding the Code for Sustainable Homes in all its necessary contradictions. My recommendation is that you do that for Code levels 1 to 5, and leave aside the irrationality of Code level 6 until it becomes clearer what “zero carbon” means to the Communities and Local Government ministry.
Ian Abley’s Summary of Code for Sustainable Homes – down load PDF
No comments yet.
Leave a comment
