CASE STUDY  

Octavia Housing & Care
Emily House & James Hill House
The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea
London. UK

Emily House is the new corporate head quarters for Octavia Housing & Care, a London based social housing provider and James Hill House is an extra-care facility for older people with support needs.

Octavia own and manage around 4000 properties in London, Essex and Southampton, UK.

James Sterling, while employed by Octavia & representing the companies Eco-working group, was asked to investigate the sustainability of the new office and to suggest improvements that could be made to lower its carbon footprint.

The design of the building was already complete and construction had already begun, so major changes to the design were not possible, instead a ‘retro’ fit approach was taken.

The main focus was placed on local energy generation and energy conservation. From the initial discussions, the most promising solution for local electricity generation was a roof mounted photovoltaic solar system.

Solar Century, a London based consultancy, was employed to design and supply the system on behalf of Octavia. The final specification for the system was a 40kW, pitched Sanyo system (one of the largest Photovoltaic Solar Systems in London). The system was partly funded by the UK government ‘Clear sky’s’ scheme.

In addition to the solar system, a 12 kW Natural Gas Combined Heat & Power (CHP) unit was installed to provide heat to the extra care units and the office space (backed up by high efficiency condensing natural gas boilers). The unit also generated up to 12kW of electricity which is provided to the office space.

Both the PV and the CHP will reduce the need to import electricity from the National Grid and will in turn lower the carbon produce by the building.

Any additional energy produced, mainly at weekends, is sold back to the local electricity supplier.

Many areas of energy saving were investigated, several concepts were no longer possible due to the stage of construction, but others was used.

The building was already designed to meet Part L of the building regulations for England, so the building envelope was very efficient. The main focus was placed in M & E equipment installed in the office and extra care unit.

Several different solutions were investigated, from these the following systems where installed:

Lifts (Elevators):

The specification of the lifts was changed to a Mitsubishi MRL, these lifts use much energy than many other lifts that were suitable for the building.

Air System

The heating and cooling for the office was provided by an energy efficient climate control system. The system changed the air in the office, during this change the system pre-heated or pre-cooled the incoming air using air to water to air heat exchangers which recovered any heat from the outgoing air, this reduced the demand the on plant whilst ensure a comfortable working environment.

Parking Control

The system was chosen due to the very low energy demand, for example the traffic lights only used 3w compared with a tradition system which uses 40w.

BEMS

A Building Energy Management System was installed to monitor the energy consumption of the individual areas of the office. The system was designed to monitor the lighting, cooling/heating and power outlets on each floor. The data collected from the system is used to target energy savings.

Office & external lighting

The lighting on the office building is controlled by automatic infrared sensors (PIRs), they ensured that the lighting in the building was only used when it was occupied. The external lighting is controlled using automatic dusk to dawn sensors.

Transport – The building is located close to several forms of public transport to help encourage staff to leave their cars at home. The company has also purchased new pool cars for each department, these are petrol/LPG duel fuel Smart Cars, which produce much less CO2 that ordinary petrol cars. There are also charge-points in the car park for electric cars, when they become commercially available.

James Hill House opened in October 2006 and Emily House opened in November 2006.

James Sterling 16th February 2007