I went to a presentation by Mott MacDonald in Sheffield's new Vulcan House - the new Home Office HQ. I went a long expecting little - so many of these 'sustainable' buildings seem like a tick list of eco-bling.

I was however pleasantly surprised. They have delivered a low energy (by office standards) building with a lot of thought in materials specification. It is a fully AC office, that delivers lower energy use than many natural ventilated offices (better than 'good standard' new Nat Vent @ 180kwh/m2). The AC is much smaller than usual (due to all the avoidance of solar gain) .A lot of thought was put into orientation and layout, with lots of glazing variations depending on aspect, shading and southerly buffer zones (eg sever and storage rooms), combined with a light well and garden in the center of the building. Lights are organised in switched gangs parallel to windows, and are all on daylight and occupancy sensors. Zero VOC paints, recycled carpet and furniture etc used inside. Green roofs and terraces are accessible from the ofiices direct. All areas have recycling boxes. Low flow taps n toilets, with some rainwater used to flush urinals. Airtightness was 7ach/m3/m2@50pa - with a number of bags blowing off vents that they could not reach, so they think it is closer to 5ach. Damn good for such a large building.

All the carbon cost of getting materials to site was measured - all suppliers were posted 'swipe cards' to get onto site to measure distance traveled to site (And carbon emissions) - all deliveries without 'swipe cards' had to fill in a form to state mileage etc. Carbon embodied only equates to one years running cost in carbon apparently, and is about the same as the weight of the building. 75% of the carbon was transport, of which half was 'tiny' deliveries such as a couple of boxes of screws via DHL for a subbie....

Generally there is no eco bling or shiny technology - they stripped it down to the basics of good design and specification. There were all sorts of questions such as 'why did you not use a heat pump?' that were slapped down quite well with 'we didn't need it'.

Its all going to be monitored by Sheffield Uni in detail.

In general, I thought it was a great example of how reductions and efficiency are far better than 'bling'; how detail matters; how airtightness and careful insulation is a huge gain; and how solar gain is a bigger issue than heating in such buildings.

Best bit? all delivered for £1600/m2, and the cost saving of moving from 5 old offices in Sheffield to being in one new office is £1m a year to the taxpayer - so they delivered a higher performing, lower cost building for the same cost as a 'cheap office' (like we are seeing all over Sheffield at the moment). The rent is LESS than the Sheffield average, and running costs in energy/water/maintenance are expected to be significantly lower than other new offices.

See, this green stuff works...


http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3101111

http://www.hcd.co.uk/index.htm




PS, shall I sidestep the issue of it being on a flood plain and having the carpark closer than the bike storage or bus stop?

it is - it tyoed it too quickly!