CASE STUDY | Rural Regeneration Centre, Hadlow College

The Rural Regeneration Centre in Kent, designed using ArchiCAD, is the UK’s First Certified Passivhaus Educational Building

…the structure was airtight to a very high standard of

0.34h-1Over of the original shed structure was retained on site

uses of the typical energy consumption of a modern building

95%

10%

The drive for sustainable architecture is pushing architects to develop designs that not only deliver on appearance but also take account of energy consumption, carbon emissions and operational costs. This requires the modelling of intricate detail, with sustainable design choices made in one area of a building significantly impacting other aspects of the design. This is further compounded when taking the design to the standards outlined by Passivhaus.

Designing to this level of detail requires software that can not only support the development of the model using BIM but also integral sustainability tools that can tell, even from early stage design, the energy output of the building.

Therefore when it came to designing The Rural Regeneration Centre at Hadlow College in Kent to Passivhaus standards, James Anwyl, Director of EUROBUILD used ArchiCAD® together with its integrated thermal performance module – EcoDesigner - to evaluate the energy consumption of the design and MEP Modeller to co-ordinate the services within the building.

The result is that the Rural Regeneration Centre at Hadlow College is a showcase of low carbon and renewable technology. One of the top three agricultural colleges in the UK, Hadlow College’s new Centre will use just 10% of the typical energy consumption of a modern building and is the first such building in the UK to be constructed using prefabricated materials.

The Rural Regeneration Centre is a sympathetic conversion and extension to redundant cow sheds (over 95% of the original shed structure was retained on site) on the College’s fully operational dairy farm. Built using prefabricated structural insulated panels, the centre was planned using Building Information Modelling (BIM) by ArchiCAD and assembled in just three days. In under 10 days overall, the structure was airtight to a very high standard of 0.34h-1.

CASE STUDY | Rural Regeneration Centre, Hadlow College

“Designing and building Hadlow College to certified Passivhaus standard, at less than £1,500/ m2, was only possible using the right BIM software and the right prefabricated system.”

James Anwyl, Director, EUROBUILD

A number of sustainable technologies have been implemented throughout the centre including a super efficient mechanical ventilation system, triple glazed windows, and a ground source heat pump for heating and cooling. The sanitary rooms all have waterless urinals, low flush toilets, timed water- saver taps and moderated flow showers. Low energy T5 lighting is used through-out the carefully planned building.

The Rural Regeneration Centre is also a great example of marrying a strong architectural design with sustainability and the Passivhaus requirements. For example, the building has a full-height, north-facing window to provide plenty of light to the main seminar room. However this feature provides problems when running it through the Passivhaus planning package and has required thoughtful design in other areas of the building to make up for it. This has included designing in a lot of solar gain to the south and south west elevations and from the skylights, as well as upping the insulation in the walls from the usual 300mm to 400mm. These carefully considered design improvements were modelled in ArchiCAD to assess their visual impact and thermal performance.

Another challenging design issue was ventilation, which needed to meet the requirements of fresh air rates for teaching spaces (Building Bulletin 101) but yet balance this against the energy consumption of the fans. To achieve this, the most efficient mechanical ventilation system that is certified for Passivhaus use has been implemented – a Drexel & Weiss Aero Centro unit. The unit provides background ventilation daily and also allows the ventilation rates to be boosted in the teaching spaces to just above 8 l/s/person when they are at full capacity to meet the necessary requirements.

Anwyl worked closely with the ventilation engineer throughout the design and build process of this aspect due to it being such a vital component of Passivhaus. The strategy was developed jointly, with the engineer calculating optimal flows, specifying controls and designing ducting for minimum noise and best flow rates which Anwyl would then reformat into his design and BIM model using GRAPHISOFT MEP modeler.

To further protect the 120kWh/m2 a year threshold for primary energy demand and ensure that overheating

CASE STUDY | Rural Regeneration Centre, Hadlow College

isn’t an issue the building also incorporates automatic clerestory windows. These come into affect between 7pm and 7am to give free night cooling if the seminar room temperature rises above 22°C and will close after this time period or if the temperature drops to 19°C. In addition the Aero Centro unit has an integral heat exchanger connected to a 200m long ground loop which can be used to provide pre-cooling or pre-heating if the air outside is above 21°C or below 3°C respectively.

Special consideration has also been given to the materials used in this project. The timber, for example is all derived from FSC sources or from sustainably managed forests in Austria, and apart from two 1m lengths of steel section (100 x 50) there is no metal in the superstructure. In addition the panels use recycled ‘blown’ cellulose insulation and were made in EUROBUILD’s partner factory in Austria and transported directly to the site near Tonbridge, Kent. The factory is ultra compact and one of the most advanced timber frame facilities in the world.

The initial design and build of the Rural Regeneration Centre is not where the drive for sustainability stops. To assist with ongoing sustainable education and learning, the centre has been fitted with a monitoring system to track the energy consumption of the building over the next two years and beyond. This will enable EUROBUILD to learn from the ‘as built’ building performance in relation to weather and usage patterns. Results can be seen visibly by staff, students and visitors to the centre via a monitor in the exhibition centre and through the online Building User Guide.

“EUROBUILD delivered a fantastic, innovative sustainable design that has won numerous awards – exactly what we asked for and more - and investing in the early stage design development really paid dividends during the construction phase.”

Mark Lumsdon-Taylor, Hadlow College Finance Director

CASE STUDY | Rural Regeneration Centre, Hadlow College

Anwyl sums up the success of this project quite simply,“Designing and building Hadlow College to certified Passivhaus standard, at less than £1,500/ m2, was only possible using the right BIM software and the right prefabricated system.”

To date the Rural Regeneration Centre has been awarded Passivhaus certification, the first educational establishment to achieve this accolade and has won the Environmental Project of the Year at the Construction Computing Awards. Anwyl is continuing his passion to marry aesthetically pleasing designs whilst delivering low energy buildings with a number of Passivhaus projects in the pipeline. Through his firm’s deep knowledge

of the fine detail required to design the most sustainable buildings, and the ability to model and test designs with ArchiCAD, EcoDesigner and MEP Modeller, EUROBUILD is delivering beautiful, energy efficient buildings at speed and scale.

And the enthusiasm Anwyl exudes for Hadlow is also shared by the Client. Mark Lumsdon-Taylor, Hadlow College Finance Director, comments “EUROBUILD delivered a fantastic, innovative sustainable design that has won numerous awards – exactly what we asked for and more - and investing in the early stage design development really paid dividends during the construction phase.”

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