The 100% affordable housing project on Croft Street in Plasnewydd is being delivered through our award winning Cardiff Living partnership with Wates Residential.
Nine new council homes are being delivered using an innovative modular system on what is a very constrained brownfield site within an older residential area of Cardiff. The use of modular here is an ideal solution in order to minimise the disruption of construction work to the surrounding residents and significantly reduces the time that we are on site.
Each modular home is built in a factory and will be delivered to site in two parts; a ground floor and an upper floor which will be craned into position from the back of transport lorry and then connected onsite. There will be 18 modules in total making up the 9 houses.
Modular construction enables the vast majority of work to be completed within factory-controlled conditions. This provides superb quality control, reduces the performance gap between design & build and significantly reduces the construction programme compared to a traditional build. This means we get our new homes quicker, which means more families housed more quickly and we can reduce the impact of our construction work on the surrounding residents.
It is particularly suited for this constrained site which has limited room for construction plant, labour, workforce parking and materials storage.
Installation onsite of the 18 modular units making up these new homes is expected to take just 5 days, with just a few weeks more to ‘zip up’ and complete the work before they are ready to welcome their new occupants.
This site and programme of works has been extremely well managed to ensure the benefits of modular are realised to their full potential – a small team of site based workers commenced the groundwork & service connections at the same time that the modular units were being constructed in the factory.
This means that the external work is completed ready for the delivery of the modular units to site and within 4 weeks of the modules arriving we can take handover of the completed homes.
All of the homes are built to near Passivhaus standards, are DQR compliant and are fully demountable so in theory they could be relocated elsewhere in the future. That is not the plan here though – we anticipate these homes being part of the community for many years to come!
The Scheme comprises of 9 x 2 bed council homes for social rent. Private back gardens, bike and bin storage and small front gardens to providing a buffer to the pavement.
The scheme incorporates a policy compliant SUDs strategy & green infrastructure to ensure storm water run off does not adversely impact on the existing drainage systems.
In addition to the anticipated low-running costs the modern, high-end fixtures and finish specified for these homes will provide a great place for our tenants to live.
The new homes are designed to ensure lower energy bills for residents and are close to Passivhaus standards. The site is off gas, utilising higher levels of insulation within the building fabric. Highly efficient Infrared radiator panels for heating needs, combined with a solar PV array mounted on each roof to help offset electrical usage and heat hot water. Each home is further enhanced by their low air permeability, the use of heat recovery devices and triple glazing.
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If you have any questions or concerns about this project, please contact us.