Structural | Civil | Engineering | Social and Affordable Housing | Commercial | Drainage | Residential | Subsidence | Highway Design

Blackditch, Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire

Description

The scheme was for 16 social housing units to Code 5 sustainable values and with a number of low maintenance, low running, and low Carbon construction solutions incorporated in the scheme.

Client

Cottsway Housing Association

Value

£3,500,000

• The site was on the edge of a second world war landfill site, with a variable and sometimes very high water table. The foundation solution was piles and groundbeams to remove the uncertainty with the ground and the watertable. The superstructure was timber frame but the external skin was a 300mm thickness of a cement straw mixture to give a very high insulation value and low material cost. Construction methods and wall tie solutions had to be developed as this was one of the first times this construction method had been used on social housing.

• The houses also incorporated underfloor heating , photovoltaic cells on the roofs, and ground floor heat pumps in the gardens.

• The drainage used SUDS and porous paving for the roads and hardstandings, and the foul drainage had to be pumped to an adjacent foul sewer after investigation there was no suitable gravity outfall.