Project Details
- Client Name: Sutton Housing Partnership
- Project Value: £1m (combined)
- Sector: Residential
- Services: Building Surveying, Employer's Agent, Health and Safety
- Key partners: Bowtie Construction
- Contact: Matthew Allcock – 020 8294 1000
We were appointed as employer’s agent and to undertake due diligence and design review on a post-contract award for two retrofit projects in the London Borough of Sutton for Sutton Housing Partnership.
The ECO 6 project saw an innovative off-site manufactured, combined air source heat pump and mechanical ventilation pod installed to six properties on the St Helier Estate in Sutton.
Additional works included the installation of cavity wall foam, insulation works to the loft, and installation of PV panels.
The contractor Bowtie Construction is a small scale pioneer in retrofit off-site solutions and provided a contract programme to deliver the works in eight weeks to each of the two sections.
The solution, a Ventive pod, is the product of cutting-edge university research and development to complement the wide-scale roll out and mass mobilisation of retrofit solutions across the UK’s housing stock, to meet legally binding climate and ecological emergency targets as mandated by the UK government.
On Browning Avenue, the same contractor provided a similar Viessman-type solution and alternative external wall insulation package owing to issues with supply chain and timescale deliverability with the Ventive unit.
Whilst a rapidly developing and exciting field, certain technical challenges and teething issues occurred with the Ventive units, which is to be expected for a new technology.
The rapid installation of off-site locally manufactured solutions with combined renewable technologies offers one avenue to achieve the required mass retrofit of existing UK housing stock at scale, with some additional work required to better understand embodied and whole life carbon.
Sutton Housing Partnership has a proven track record of delivering innovative and forward thinking retrofit and is a leader in the current programme of local authorities / housing associations delivering on UK Government BEIS funding streams, which are due to progress and develop over the coming years to achieve significant reductions in UK housing carbon emissions.
