30 New Flats Change of Use from the County Court House
Architect
Paul Hicking Associates
This stunning Grade II listed building was converted from old derelict council offices into 30 new residential apartments. The façade is protected as are many of the internal architectural features. GBE were brought on board to assess the servicing strategy and to produce the relevant documentation required to take the project through the tendering process.
On this project consideration has been made for the reduction of energy use within dwellings, to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels. To ensure apartments have good heat retention, each has been designed to have a building fabric with good quality insulation and tested with a low air permeability rating, as passive means of energy conservation.
An all-electric scheme used to heat rooms and provide a hot water supply has been proposed for this scheme over gas-fired boilers. This will eradicate penetration requirements through the protected façade, by avoiding the necessity for flues. Automatic electric storage radiators will heat dwellings on an economy 7 tariff, allowing dwellings to be heated using off-peak rates to reduce the demand on the grid, thus reducing the requirement to use fossil fuels at peak times. On this particular scheme the developer decided to spend more on improving the passive means of heating rather and saved on active.
GBE was involved from the concept design stages of the scheme, including the utilities assessment, right through to the construction stages and handover.