Waterveld in Borne

 

Comfort: The house is part of a small project of 6, but the only nearly-zero Active House. The house is oriented on a park and brook on the eastside and on the garden. The first floor has an overhang above the entrance with gives a magnificent outlook on park and brook and provides shelter near the front door. The amount of daylight is an important part of the design: lots of daylight from both sides in the living room and kitchen. Large windows on the east for a view on the adjacent park and brook. Windows in the bathroom and hallway upstairs. Less daylight in the bedrooms. The windows also give the opportunaty to create cross ventilation and ventilative cooling throughout the house. A zoned ventilation system with CO2 and RV sensors, and both heat and humidity recuparation, creates and maintains a healthy indoor climate.

Energy: The house is well isolated especially those constructions that quickly lose energy such as rooftops and windows with triple glazing in combinatie with a ventilationsystem with heat recovery. The need for energy for heating is therefore very low. A combiboiler, for both heating and domestic hot water, is a user friendly installation that can easily manage the low heating demand. PV panels on the rooftops supply more then the electricity that’s needed in the house (including domestic use) and so also supply power for a plug-in hybrid car.

 

Environment: In the Netherlands we have a history of making brick buildings. Bricks are made of clay from the nearby surroundings and last for over 100 years. Here part of the envelop is finished with thin ceramic tiles.

The solar power roof is of a building-integrated type, thus making roof tiles superfluous. Rain is infiltrated in the garden or in the wadi beside the road.