Coach house to New Home…

JMA have submitted a new residential project for planning, following several weeks of design process and client consultation. The project, a new two bedroomed home on a brownfield site, is situated in a conservation area and replaces a derelict former coach house.

The new home will be situated at the end of a driveway running between two grand Victorian terraces and will nestle amongst mature trees. The compact site and sylvan setting required a simple design solution, which will provide everything that a small family dwelling needs. Open plan living, dining and kitchen areas overlook hard and soft landscape. Master bedroom and second double bedroom reside partially within the roof, slope so as to keep the overall height as low as possible, with guided views along the access drive to avoid overlooking issues. The hardstanding in front of the home doubles as car parking and external hard landscape amenity and the raised lawn is the perfect size for a dwelling of this size.

The landscape response forms part of the environmentally aware approach to designing a new home, another important element of which is the mechanical ventilation with heat recovery system, or MVHR for short, designed as part of the ‘build tight ventilate right’ approach to fabric design. The image below shows the MVHR unit, situated in the roof space, connected to intake ductwork, in blue, which draws fresh air in from outside and passes it over a plate heat exchange, taking heat from the extracted air from kitchen, utility and bath rooms, shown in red. The tempered, clean air is delivered to the living and sleeping rooms, shown in green. This approach, combined with making the fabric airtight, helps to lower the heating demand of the new home, thereby lowering the cost to run the home and ensuring a better quality of internal air.