Hoo House

On a site in the market town of Woodbridge in Melton Suffolk, this new build timber framed house, designed by Jerry Tate Architects is a modern interpretation of local agricultural buildings. The design of Hoo House has met the requirements of a flexible family home, budgetary limitations, planning constraints and design and sustainability aspirations.

Through the balance of these conflicting issues the scheme is a template for future low-cost, low-energy and easy to use housing. Internally the smaller rooms are grouped together in one half of the envelope volume, in order to provide a dramatic double-height living space with a fireplace in the centre.

A combination of air source heat pump, super-insulation, solar-thermal panels and clever daylighting strategies reduce the entry requirements of the house, so that it produces 60% less carbon emissions, compared to a UK ‘standard’ new-build house. The project achieved this whilst working within the client’s tight budgetary constraints.

Small Projects Sustainability

The fabric of Hoo House was designed to minimise energy loss and summer overheating whilst maximising daylighting and winter solar gain. The form of the building is compact to reduce the amount of external envelope compared to internal volume and the orientation on site was optimised with a solar study. The super insulated timber frame with 220mm of mineral wool in the walls, giving a u-value of 0.16 w/m2K, and 300mm of mineral wool in the roof, giving a u-value of 0.11 w/m2K, is constructed from pre-fabricated timber panels minimising on site waste and providing a good level of air-tightness. Heating and energy systems were chosen to be low maintenance and easy to use by the recently widowed client. The primary heating system is an air source heat pump, with a solar thermal hot water system, providing reasonably low-carbon heating with the possibility of no dependence on fossil fuels with a renewable electricity supply tariff. 11.86 is the annual predicted kgC02/m².