A Code for Sustainable Homes Level 6, Zero Carbon development of 12 apartments and 9 houses all for Social rent.

This is an interesting project, one that I was involved with for over 5 years. Before we set up CDI, we did a number of things including introducing new construction systems to projects, Supply Chain Consultancy, Project Management as well as providing a variety of Construction Consultancy rolls.

One of these was as a Construction Sustainability Consultant, this included carrying out BRE, Code for Sustainable Homes assessments.  These assessments were the proposed route to achieve Zero Carbon homes by 2016, unfortunately, the assessment was scrapped before this date, however many of the standards within the Code were adopted into Building Regulations to bring up the standard of new-build homes.

Sinclair Meadows went through a long design process and part of this was the separating floors within the apartments that needed to achieve a number of criteria. These included:

• An acoustic rating for both airborne and impact sound that improved upon the Building Regulations standards by a minimum 8dB for each.
• A BRE Green Guide to Specification of A+ (BRE Green Guide).
• Materials must be responsibly sourced.
• An application suitable for a Timber Framed building.
• Fire separation.

As I was already involved with the project as the Code assessor, I couldn’t put forwards one of our own systems to meet the specification, however, following the submission of a number of proposed floor build-ups based upon improved Robust Standard Detail floors achieving poor Green Guide ratings, I suggested that a Lewis Deck floor build-up be submitted to the BRE alongside the next project team generated floor proposal.  The long and short of it being, the Lewis Deck floor was the only detail submitted to the BRE that achieved the A+ Green Guide rating.