Site visit: zero carbon house with Bron Afon Community Housing Association

Blake Morgan Property Group and Project Management Teams recently had the pleasure of being given a tour of a Bron Afon Community Housing (Bron Afon) flagship zero carbon house.

David Jones Principal Decarbonisation Officer at Bron Afon, gave a guided tour to Blake Morgan Partner Louise Howells, Senior Paralegal Katie Edwards and Cost Manager Antony Catris.

The house, situated in Cwmbran, is one of a handful of trial properties being used by Housing Associations in Wales to test carbon reduction methods and products. The property had become void after being occupied by the same person since it was built, and was chosen for the project using a set of criteria Bron Afon has developed to identify suitable properties and justify investment in line with their Strategic Commitment on Decarbonisation of Homes.

Quality requirements

The trial has also incorporated the anticipated requirements that are likely to be included in the new Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS23), likely to come into implementation later this year.

One of the requirements of WHQS23 is to promote minimal carbon emissions from social homes. This also feeds into the Welsh Government’s Net Zero Wales commitment, which has set an interim target of 2030 for the public sector to be net zero and we were particularly interested to see how Bron Afon were contributing to this through the adoption of innovative technology.

In order to achieve zero carbon for heating and hot water of the home, Bron Afon installed the following features:

• Solar Panels with a battery bank which, once it is full, pushes electricity back out into the grid, also helping to decarbonise neighbouring properties.
• A wastewater heat recovery system in the shower and a water saving shower-head and taps;
• New bonded polystyrene bead wall insulation and underfloor insulation;
• Heating provided by infrared wallpaper which is controlled by a transformer in each room and allows each room to be heated independently of the rest of the house; and
• Environmental monitoring units which allow Bron Afon to track CO2, temperature and humidity readings for the property – this can also enable Bron Afon to detect potential disrepair issues before they become a problem.

Bron Afon have also removed the gas supply and boiler to the property and installed a vented hot water storage tank attached to a Heata™ system. The Heata™ system takes a small processing computer which would ordinarily be found in a large environmentally unfriendly data centre and attaches it to a water tank in an individual household. The data to be processed is sent to the computer and the heat produced during processing is used to heat the water in the tank. As Heata™ currently pay for any electricity used by the system, the property benefits from free hot water. This is currently the only system of its kind in Wales.

The features are only being trialled at the moment. However, it is hoped that any future properties within Bron Afon’s stock that require improvements will benefit from one or several of the new products in order to reduce the carbon footprint of their housing stock.

Louise Howells commented:

She added: “In recent weeks it has been high on our agenda with it being the subject of not only our most recent Developing Connections event but the Women in Property South Wales breakfast seminar held at offices during which Associated British Ports discussed its efforts to realise a zero carbon future in Port Talbot and beyond.”

Find out more about Blake Morgan’s social housing expertise here and infrastructure experience here.