Your ultimate guide to slashing energy bills at home
telegraph.co.ukPAD Studio because of their knowledge of the local area and its planning laws, and their experience in designing energy-efficient buildings.“We always work from a fabric-first approach, making the envelope of the building as energy-efficient as we can,” says Perring. “It’s about clever design: maximising the solar gain in winter and minimising it in summer, and making the envelope of the house work really hard for you.”In the case of this house, they chose materials specifically to meet those requirements, with a brick exterior and plenty of exposed brickwork on the inside, too. “A lightweight building, such as one with a timber frame, will heat up and cool down very quickly,” says Perring, “whereas a house with thermal mass, made from concrete or brick, will absorb the sun’s energy during the day and, when the temperature drops at night, release the energy back out.
There’s much less fluctuation in temperature, so you’ve got a very comfortable internal environment and you don’t need to boost the heating in the evening, which is really energy intensive.”To help keep the house cool in the summer, they designed an overhang that runs around the building’s exterior.
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