Sustainability And Acoustics
Extensions have to be in accordance with a Government defined process, compliant with Part L Building Control Regulations known as SAP Assessments (Standard Assessment Procedure); It relates to energy performance of new habitual buildings.
Commercial, industrial and retail will also be compliant with Part L Building Control Regulations known as SBEM (Simplified Building Energy Module).
Under the Code of Sustainable Homes, your local Planning Officer normally requests your planning application complies with target emission rates from 1-6, 6 being 100%, a requirement of level 3 being a standard on all applications.
Under the new Par LIA regulations, it targets the conservation of fuel and power consumption within new dwellings.
An air leakage pressure test will confirm to the building control officer that a dwelling is compliant to Part L Regulations.
Eco homes is an environmental credit-based rating scheme which is voluntary at present, and designed to target new dwellings and refurbishment/conversion projects. The standards required environmentally exceed those implemented by Building Control to make any dwelling/home built against Eco Homes superior, ensuring sustainability of house building is maintained.
Solar energy utilizes solar roof panels to heat large cylinders of water, primarily for domestic hot water systems. Photvoltaies allow direct solar radiation to convert into electricity by the interaction of light in a semi conductive coil.
Geothermal heat source is a newer method of heating our houses by using heat pumps that extract heat from the ground and transfer it into our homes. These are called Ground Source heat pumps and exchanger. The system draws heat out of the ground.
Acoustic testing relates to the approved Document Building Regulations Part E requirement to test for sound transfer and performance of a party wall divide for airborne and impact sound insulation.
Rainwater Harvesting is surface water collected via roof guttering systems to an underground tank. This water is then filtered to remove debris and leafage material and then pumped direct to toilets, washing machines, outside taps and sprinkler systems. In some cases more than 60% of mains water can be substituted by rainwater.
