Canada’s minister of natural Resources has unveiled the first of what could be thousands of highly energy efficient ‘Super E’ Canadian timber frame houses to be built in the UK.
Herb Dhaliwel cut the ribbon on April 19 at a housing site managed jointly by developers Sunley and Environ in West Malling, Kent. The event attracted about 170 people, including developers, builders and representatives of local authorities. Also present were representatives of the timber frame supplier MIC-Alouette of Montreal and Canadian government agencies involved in the development of the Super E concept.
The Super E panels are delivered ‘flat-pack’ from Canada, with double-glazed timber windows, trussed rafters and cladding.
The key to the energy efficiency of the houses (and the first four-bedroom house will cost only £25 per month to heat) is that they are completely air tight and ventilated mechanically.
‘The Super E house is designed as a system,’ said Oliver Drerup of one of project’s backers the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. ‘The performance of each component is taken into account relative to the rest of the building.’
Environ managing director Tony Dowse, said that benefits of the Super E concept to developers included speed and simplicity of construction, with the first house completed in just 40 days. He added that another 30 will be built at West Malling.
Kent County Council head of regeneration Graham Gibbens said that Super E houses were the ideal type of building to meet the south-east’s growing housing private and social housing needs.
Mr Drerup said that initially the target is to sell hundreds of Super E houses in the UK, and that this could rise to thousands. ‘But we are not rushing in, we are first working alongside our UK partners and organisations like TRADA and BRE, to prove the performance of Super E with technical evidence of unassailable veracity,’ he said.
