Kingspan Off-Site

Source: Construction Digital

Date :23/10/2007 14:00:54

The net-zero carbon challenge

Tom Paul talks us through Kingspan Off-Site’s groundbreaking Lighthouse project at BRE

Written by James Hurley & Produced by Nicholas Davies

Of all the UK industries, it’s arguably housebuilders and its associated supply chain that have most successfully embraced the challenge of moving towards zero carbon. The Government’s Code for Sustainable Homes defines six levels of environmental sustainability, with level one set just above current building regulations and level six at ‘net-zero carbon’, including appliance, lighting and total occupant energy use. While level six will be mandatory by 2016, and a handful of manufacturers have anticipated the change by developing level four or five housing, only one company has been precocious enough to develop a net zero carbon house that already meets level six; Kingspan Off-Site.

Offsite solution

Kingspan Off-Site is part of Kingspan Group plc, a building products business focused on establishing leading market positions by providing innovative products, systems and solutions with a global reach. The Off-Site division is one of the largest and most experienced providers of modern methods of construction (MMC), a factor that was integral to the company’s development of its zero emission home, Lighthouse at the Building Research Establishment (BRE) at Watford.

Tom Paul explains the origins of the division. “Historically the offsite industry has been centred around volumetric, 3D systems. We looked at this three years ago and thought about how we were going to move the agenda forward in the MMC sector. We established an offsite business development division which became Kingspan Off-Site. One of Kingspan’s major strategic strengths as a group has been to take markets from niche to mainstream and for example the insulation and insulated panel businesses have done that; Kingspan is now the largest manufacturers of insulation and insulated roof and wall envelope systems certainly in Europe and probably globally. The objective now is for the Off-Site business to continue in that vein.”

Kingspan’s formula has been to develop strategic approaches to markets to move them from niche to mainstream, and therefore Off-Site is no different. The Lighthouse project can be seen as a bold initial step to moving both MMC and the carbon-zero home agenda towards the implementation of the Code for Sustainable Homes and developing a mainstream business position.

“We have looked very closely at the modern methods of construction agenda and identified that 3D volumetric systems were not cost neutral compared with traditional methods.”

Kingspan Offite’s response was to build a strategy based around 2D panelised systems. “The hole strategy is the development and application of 2D panelised systems right across the construction sector which includes residential private and affordable housing, apartments, , education, healthcare, hotel and leisure, and student accommodation,” Paul explains. “We are talking about 2D frame systems incorporating outer and inner walls , floor cassettes combined with non-load bearing and load bearing external facades.”

Additionally within the other businesses in the Group we have the capability to integrate a package of renewable technologies, sustainable urban drainage (SUDS) water conservation methods including rain water harvesting. Therefore we are in the business of providing property developers, constructors and their design teams a range of frame solutions in timber, structural insulated panels (SIPS), steel and hybrid. This coupled with a massive range of rainscreen facades enables us to provide a frame and shell package across any masterplan.

The integrated approach

Kingspan Off-Site worked alongside a number of experienced partners in its development of Lighthouse, including Architects Sheppard Robson, Arup, Davis Langdon, MacFarlane Wilder and CCB Evolution. Every material and component that was used was chosen specifically for its ability to optimise the house design’s overall sustainability credentials. The company was in the perfect position to develop the innovations required to get to level six. “Kingspan has an excellent track record in delivering timber steel and hybrid frame systems. This means Off-Site can accommodate MMC needs and call on wider group capability and products, for example renewable energy products,” says Tom Paul.

Kingspan Group provides products and solutions across all sectors of the global property market. It can call on manufacturing, distribution and commercial expertise in 35 locations, with some 25 manufacturing facilities.

Lighthouse was constructed using the company’s TEK building system, incorporating structural insulated panels (SIPS) which provide outstanding thermal efficiency with low air-tightness. “The big advantage of TEK is that it comes off a manufacturing line. It’s a holistic panelised system in itself - when you pull it together as a wall, floor or roof assembly by proper detailing of the junctions and the interfaces including the integration of windows and doors, you can develop and design and build an enhanced thermally efficient and air-tight building envelop.”

This unitised and panelised approach combines effective interfaces and junction design with strong conceptual architecture.. “The winner in the future is going to be a holistic solution like the TEK system. It is a system which provides certainty of design and as-built performance which is key to delivering the Code for Sustainable Homes and low energy, carbon footprint housing.. The MMC systems do not rely on variable quality of site skills and therefore provide certainty of build quality. ne of the benefits of being in the building envelope business for the last twenty-five years is that Kingspan fully understands the benefits of the offsite manufacturing methodology, and how that provides build quality certainty on site. “We holistically bring that together as a solution and a system from foundation to ridge. This gives us a big advantage in the MMC agenda. We’ve got timber systems, steel systems, roof and floor systems, and the façade which can be integrated as a shell and core package. We’ve spent a lot of time in Japan, the United States and Europe in the last two or three years looking at integration of renewables and what works and what doesn’t. We can integrate all of these at design and at build.”

Off grid

Kingspan’s Lighthouse - a development specifically for BRE – is the most advanced house design ever produced for mainstream construction. Why so ambitious? “There was no point in going to level four or five. We went up to level six and we could do pretty much whatever you wanted in compliance with the brief. This was an opportunity to develop an examplar design that cranked up the agenda to level six and comply with the sustainability code for homes. In order to achieve that you have to put a platform of renewables in to make it truly off grid,” says Tom Paul.

The company brought in Suntech MSK, the largest manufacturers in Japan of high performance integrated photovoltaic array panels (PVs) that can capture energy from the sun to supply electricity for a whole house . It also brought in Kingspan Thermomax solar thermal water heating . “. Additionally, we put in a biomass boiler. The challenge here is that there isn’t yet a house sized biomass boiler. so we had to put in an oversized unit . But we are now working with companies in the supply chain to actually develop a range of biomass boilers that are suitably sized.”

Another option is to put a district power and heating system (CHP) in On larger developments which bring down individual house renewables costs to an affordable level.While moving off grid was an impressive achievement, it raised some interesting issues. Paul says that some ‘micro-renewables’ - small-scale renewable energy technologies – simply aren’t cost effective enough. “Lighthouse generates all of its own electricity and that’s a major achievement. While an offsite power solution may be a more effective solution in the long term – arguably when the energy industry embraces the challenge of delivering a low carbon economy as effectively as the construction industry – some of the integrated technological advancements developed for Lighthouse have represented a great leap forward in MMC. “The house really does deliver the environmental standard for new homes in the future,” as Paul puts it.

“The renewable sector for building integrated renewables (BIPV) is still a cottage industry in the UK. There’s a lot of water to go under the bridge – solar thermal is goodbut PV isn’t competitive enough at the moment and the Bio-mass sector needs to introduce a wider range of products more suited to small-scale housing developments. Additionally, building mounted wind energy methods are unreliable in urban environments and are architecturally not an attractive option. So there is plenty of ‘work in progress’ to be done on the micro-renewables agenda.

Sustainability scale

A standard energy bill for a household is approximately £500 per annum. Lighthouse already reduces this to around £31 for the year. It also feeds spare electricity back to the National Grid. While the cost of building the house was approximately 30 percent higher than that of an existing home, Paul emphasises that it would get cheaper as the industry scales up its capability. A 250 house unit development could use other renewable energy solutions, for example a district energy system. Light house has an energy mix that comes from 4.7kW PV panels, 4m² of solar hot water and 2kW from a biomass boiler powered by wood pellets. By contrast, a 250 unit development could be powered by a local wind turbine providing 400kW, a centralised biomass boiler providing 450kW and 100kWe from biomass CHP.

Of course, implementing large scale level six developments is still a challenge. “We will have to bring on-stream a range of renewable platforms to roll out level six - you don’t want to live in a house that’s constantly needing maintenance on its micro renewables,” Paul concedes.

He says that changes at government and utility industry infrastructure level will be required. “There are some big challenges on the agenda over the coming years. From where we are today, we can easily achieve affordable code level three and four. There are skill training and development issues, but it’s a big step to move to level six for everyone, including the energy industry. Nobody wants to live in a mini power station. A cheaper more sensible solution may be to use offshore wind for power. The utilities industry hasn’t got that agenda sorted yet.”

Paul doesn’t see a huge level of houses being built with a significant platform of PVs in the immediate future. “It’s long term payback, and it will come down to more economic renewable forms, the PV sector has a lot of work to do. The second and third generation of PVs will be more like 40 percent efficiency rather than the current 20. We’re working on the second and third generation of renewable technologies and fuel cells maybe a possibility when the price comes down. These technologies will be rapidly accelerated over the next five years.”

Yet what happened at BRE was a massive step forward for the industry, as Paul concludes. “The code for sustainable homes came out in January. The technical guidance didn’t come out until April. It’s a massive credit to how quickly the supply chain got out of the blocks to be able to design and build a level 6 house, The BRE Lighthouse scheme has accelerated Kingspan Offsite’s expertise to provide homes which meet the Code for Sustainable Homes at all levels.