Self-building architect Philip Newbold looks back a decade to the battle he successfully fought to build the first ‘passive house’ in County Durham with an A-rated EPC, and how it has served him and his wife since
The journey of Greendale Cottage began over 10 years ago. When the 2008 crash left me redundant after 35 years in architecture, I became self-employed and trained as a Certified Passivhaus Consultant in 2010.
Having lived in a succession of leaky homes, my wife Joy and I wanted to find a comfortable and sustainable home. However, as we couldn’t find anything suitable on the market, we set about finding a plot and building our own place.
In 2011, we stumbled upon a 350 m2 plot in Upper Weardale that we believed had detailed planning consent. But we soon discovered that the consent had expired in 2009, which led to
various complications.
The vendor had to reapply for planning but was refused due to changes in the council’s environmental policies. Even though the foundations for the house were already cast, the vendor had to employ a planning consultant to renew the planning consent with 15 conditions. Despite these issues, we secured ownership of the land in January 2012 for £70k.
PLANNING
The village of Upper Weardale sits within a conservation area and an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) on the River Wear. When I opened discussions with planning on their 15 conditions, I found the planners to be extremely inflexible, and not really interested in my aspirations to build a low-energy Passivhaus. The Conservation Planning Officer in particular was not interested in the Government’s energy conservation agenda at all, only conservation of the local vernacular building style. The planners also insisted on retaining the L-shaped floor plan of the original planning consent with local stone walls, chimney stacks, natural slate roof and sliding sash windows.
Thanks to these draconian planning restrictions, out went any hope of being able to build a certified Passivhaus.
THE BUILD
The house was a two-storey, three-bedroomed detached house of 116 m2 with an additional attic plant room and store of 46 m2. There is a small yard with outbuildings at the rear and a
south-facing cottage garden and patio at the front. There was an existing stone double garage on the site with a flat, tin roof which served as our site cabin during the build.
In March 2012, work finally commenced on the construction of Greendale Cottage, where we moved into a tiny rented cottage next door to the plot in April 2012. Acting as the designer, project manager, buyer, site foreman, clerk of works, and even labourer, I found myself perpetually exhausted. Thankfully local sub-contractors joined our team, contributing expertise in stonemasonry, joinery, plumbing, electricity, and roofing.
The journey was not without challenges. The weather seemed to conspire against us, with incessant rain and snow for about 10 months. It was the wettest summer in a century followed by the coldest winter in half a century! Yet, despite the elements, the timber frame, constructed by Swift Timber Homes, took shape within six weeks. I also managed to install the airtightness products, MVHR system and the flue for the woodburning stove.
We had a water-tight shell by Christmas 2012 but the external stonework was less than half finished. When all the air-tightness measures were complete, the blower door air test gave a result of 0.59 air changes per hour.
During the second phase of joinery work, the house was filled with sawdust and nails, while Joy painted the plastered walls and ceilings. Meanwhile, I assisted the joiner in installing the Ikea kitchen units, and the plumber and electrician worked on installing sanitary ware, socket outlets, and light fittings.
We moved in on 1 February 2013. Since the chimney for the stove was not yet finished, we had to buy a 1.5 kW electric radiator. Despite the outside temperature being -5C, the heater maintained a comfortable internal temperature of +18C. This clearly showcased the advantages of having high levels of insulation and airtightness.
Our Woodfire F12 room-sealed woodburning stove has a back boiler that provides up to 8.5 kW to heat water in the winter and also heats towel rails in the bathrooms (and a heat-leak radiator in the linen cupboard). It is our only source of space heating.
Solar thermal panels provide most of the hot water in summer, topped up with the immersion heater, in turn assisted by the output from the solar PV panels. These had been installed and working since December 2012, but we discovered that we could not get the Feed in Tariff until we had an EPC. We could not get that until we had a completion certificate from the Building Control Officer (BCO), and we could not get the BCO completion certificate until the stove flue, stonework, roof slates, electrics and rainwater goods were finished. This was finally achieved in October 2013 and the EPC confirms our primary energy demand as 16 kWh/m2/year.
HOME TRUTHS
We have now occupied our home/office for 10 years and are finally beginning to appreciate what all our hard work has achieved. We keep the boiler stove burning in winter evenings using scrap wood and have no other space heating or fuel bills apart from electricity which is currently running at £100 a month, excluding the FiT and RHI payments. The (silent) MVHR system in effect recycles most of the heat generated inside the house while constantly providing filtered, fresh air. The recent addition of more solar PV panels on the garage and 10 kW storage batteries in February 2023 has further reduced electricity grid demand.
We have managed to self-build the first EPC Band A passive house in County Durham and have a warm, comfortable home without any oil or gas bills. More importantly, we have proved that it is possible to build a real low-energy home in a Conservation Area and AONB which fits in with the local architecture while addressing fuel poverty issues head-on. In May 2014 the house won Best New Home at the Northern LABC Building Excellence Awards and went on to win at the National Awards in London in November 2014.