Background
The former Rumney high school site was appropriated into the Council’s Housing development programme to enable a mixed tenure housing development to be delivered through the Cardiff Living programme – our innovative development partnership with Wates Residential.
The site offers a fantastic opportunity to really push the standards for mixed tenure housing development on a very large scale with a real focus on green infrastructure, placemaking, an exemplar approach to Sustainable Urban Drainage systems and, for the first time at scale, build new homes to an extremely sustainable low-carbon standard.
Wates and Cardiff Council have also partnered with Sero Homes on this site in order to ensure a truly sustainable development of 214 new homes is achieved, harnessing on-site renewable technology, high performing building fabric and maximising solar gain combined with on-going energy management from Sero homes to ensure the technology is maximised to reduce operational carbon and ensure energy bills are kept low for residents.
60% of the homes on the site have been sold. Construction is due to complete in the summer of 2024. A second phase is due to be delivered on the adjacent land fronting Newport Road, and will see apartments brought forward for sale, although this isn’t expected to commence for another 2 years.
The Eastern high site will deliver a mix of new homes and an older person ‘Community Living’ flatted scheme. All properties are built to achieve a low-carbon standard helping us move rapidly towards delivering a net-zero Carbon build programme. The scheme aims to deliver:
- Incorporation of low carbon technologies into traditional housing types
- Development of low carbon homes at scale
- Test if value of low carbon homes can be recovered in enhanced sales values
- Demonstration project for Monmouthshire Building Society’s Green Mortgage
To do so, Sero homes were appointed as a partner to help design and deliver the new homes incorporating enhanced Fabric & low-carbon Technologies as follows:
- Fabric improvement of 17% above current building regulations
- Ground source Heat Pumps for every property
- Underfloor heating
- Smart Hot water cylinders/energy stores
- Photovoltaic Panels
- Battery Storage
- Electric Vehicle charging for every home
- Intelligent Energy Management System (Sero BEE)
Due to our innovative partnership with Wates Residential we were able to begin the groundworks package ahead of the JCT contract being finalised allowing us to make early progress on site and de-risk the project.
The Scheme will deliver Zero Carbon Ready Residential Development at scale. Every home will be highly sustainable and energy efficient to ensure utility bills are kept low for residents.
214 Homes in total including:
• 149 homes for sale
• 15 homes for affordable rent
• 6 homes for low-cost home ownership
• 44 elderly person apartments for affordable rent in Community Living Block
There has been a real focus on placemaking, creating what we believe will be a very pleasant place to live. We are also delivering an exemplar SUDS strategy which incorporates the green infrastructure. The interest in this site has been impressive and we are very pleased to be able to offer a number of new homes for first time buyers through our assisted home ownership
scheme – First Homes Cardiff.
The scheme is a key demonstration project within Cardiff Council’s One Planet strategy to be a carbon neutral city by 2030. The scheme was awarded a Welsh Government IHP grant and will demonstrate how low-carbon homes can be delivered at scale.
Grid Management by Sero Homes – The fabric and low carbon technology allow the homes to operate with much lower energy and carbon usage. The control systems allow the home to be managed by a single app and ensure that the homes are easy to operate and maximise the comfort of the occupants.
The grid management software managed by Sero Homes enables the home to act as “power stations” storing power and exporting to the grid at optimum times and buying power in at optimum times for the occupiers. This can be based on either optimising cost reduction or carbon reduction. The elderly person accommodation operates on the same principals but uses a central plant rather than individual home systems.
This storage capacity and technology if used at scale nationally can assist the National Grid with smoothing out peaks and troughs in demand which are more pronounced when reliant on renewable technologies.
National Grid claims that every MW of DSR can offset the equivalent of 600 Tonnes of CO2.
The current predicted average home SAP rating for Eastern High is 95% with the best performing home achieving 126% improvement versus the recognised baseline. 96% of the houses will be EPC A rated.
Get in touch
If you have any questions or concerns about this project, please contact us.