Delaney Building

Jill Burdett on developments at Regent Road, St George’s Island, MUSE in the NQ, Islington Wharf, East Bank, Potato Wharf and elsewhere

Published on Tuesday, May 1st.

THE FIRST phase of a new build apartment scheme just off Regent Road, Salford, hits the market this week.

The developers have confidence as they know we can sell them but there is still a lack of funding. We can put the sites together and the plans can be exciting but the banks will not lend the money to build

The Delaney Building on Ordsall Lane is being built by the Manchester based Renaker Group and is being sold through Jones Lang LaSalle. The architects are Mark Weintraub Architecture & Design.

This block, the first of three, will have seventy units, a mix of one, two and three beds and, despite the scaffolding, is due to be completed by the autumn.

The timing is crucial to take advantage of the seasonal student influx.

Prices are going out at £134,950 for a 2 bed with 625sq ft up to £154,000 for an 800sq ft 3 bedder.

For comparison, two beds in Quay 5 further down Ordsall Lane are going for about £100,000 and over the road at Radclyffe Park LPC is offering a two bed duplex of 646sq ft at £129,950. Both these come with secure parking.

At Delaney it will cost you another £5,000.

But on the other bank of the river a bigger two bed in St George’s Island (pictured above), with parking, is currently selling at £185,000.

Steve Hogg, regional residential director at JLL said: “There are a lot of investors who are looking again at property and that includes individuals who may have savings in the bank giving them little return.

“Buying off-plan has changed. Previously investors would be happy to put down 10% and wait two years for a scheme to be built.

“Today they want an instant return on their money. This scheme is just a few months off completion and targeted for the late summer rental period where rents can be 20% higher simply because of sheer demand.

“We anticipate these giving a yield of about 7%, based on a rent of £750 for two beds.”

The price will be the same whether you buy one or ten and the best bargaining tool may be around furniture packs and legal fees.  In a market where transactions are few they need to keep the bottom line prices firm to keep the valuers are happy.

Although Hogg is generally bullish about the market. Throughout April their office has done a sale a day, both new builds and re-sales, figures they have not seen for many a year.

At Eastbank on Great Ancoats Street Peel built houses continue to find favour with five doctors buying there in the last month.

And investors who bought Lend Lease bargains at Potato Wharf  have seen enough uplift in the market to take some profit with three sales in the last month.

It will be interesting to see whether the developer moves to finish off the second block given the demand of the market. No doubt the launch of Cypress Place at Green Quarter will give a clear indication of the appetite for core city centre stock when it is released shortly.

Work is continuing not just on the block itself but on the marketing suite which is being re-fitted to demonstrate the updated specification to prospective purchasers.

In the Northern Quarter expect MUSE to put in planning this summer for a block of high spec apartments to complete the Smithfield project. Again Mark Weintraub Architecture & Design are the architects.

Forget NQ bohemia these will apparently be a luxury spec not seen before in the city.

A planning application is also expected soon from ISIS Regeneration for the rest of its Islington Wharf site, fronting Mill Street.

The push here is for more housing given the demand seen at Eastbank and there may even be a spade in the ground before the end of the year given the current drought of properties.

Steve Hogg said: “Residential sales have been busier than they have been in a long time. Prices are stable and demand is there.

“The developers have confidence as they know we can sell them but there is still a lack of funding. We can put the sites together and the plans can be exciting but the banks will not lend the money to build which is very frustrating and increases pressure on demand and rents.”

Taken from:  http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Property/Lowry-Wharf-Delaney-Building-Comes-To-Market

 

Thermal Mass in Housing

There is currently an interesting debate around the value of thermal mass in the design and construction of new homes, particularly how it might help homes cope with the effects of global warming and the potential risk of overheating in summer.

The issue potentially affects all new homes – not just timber frame homes.  In fact, most new homes are still built with lightweight aerated concrete blocks and drylined with plasterboard (traditional brick and block construction).  This means that most masonry homes are no more thermally massive than those built using lightweight steel or timber frame construction.

But there are arguments for and against thermal mass.

And for an independent voice of clarity on this particular topic, take a look at the views of Mark Brinkley (best known as the author of The Housebuilders Bible, the best-selling guide for self builders.  Mark has a particular interest in the technological side of housebuilding).

Mark wrote about thermal mass. This article is a helpful, balanced and jargon-free explanation of a highly technical issue.

Read his blog at:  http://markbrinkley.blogspot.com
Thermal mass: does it really save energy?

There is quite a significant body of opinion that holds that high thermal mass is one of the keys to low energy consumption. A house with high mass can absorb passive solar gain in winter and takes less energy to keep cool in summer. That is the theory. I think it’s questionable at best. Let’s examine the issues.

Firstly, what is meant by thermal mass? The mass bit refers to the heaviness or density of an object or a material. High mass building materials are concrete, brick, stone and tiles. In the low mass corner, we have not so much materials like timber and plasterboard, which are still relatively heavy, but the hollow, lightweight building systems such as timber or steel frame. Already, you can see that what we are lining up here is a re-run of the old timber frame versus brick and block argument.

The thermal bit refers to the capacity of a material to absorb heat. Broadly speaking, the heavier and denser an object or a material, the more heat is absorbs. A cubic metre of concrete can store around 80kWh of heat energy: in contrast, a cubic metre of air holds almost nothing. A whole house full of air, kept 20°C above external temperature, holds as little as 5kWh of heat energy. The structural fabric enclosing it holds anywhere between 50kWh — if it’s lightweight — up to 500kWh if it’s really heavyweight. Heavyweight doesn’t just mean masonry. Although all forms of masonry construction are heavier than framed techniques, concrete and dense blocks are much heavier than aerated concrete blocks, as made by Celcon and Thermalite.

Now, according to the theory of passive solar design, if you can capture lots of free solar energy (via large glazed walls or conservatories), you can store this heat inside the walls and floors of your heavyweight structure. Then during the night, instead of having to put the heating system on full whack, you can enjoy a free ride from the heat stored inside the structure.

But here is Problem No 1. You need lots of glazing to draw lots of heat during the day: at night time, this glazing will be leaking much of this stored heat back outside. In fact, even really good double glazed units leak six times more heat at night than walls or roofs. You can design this problem out by using insulated shutters, which cover the glazing during the night but, for many reasons, insulated shutters have never caught on and seem unlikely to do so. The fashion for large glazed areas doesn’t go with shutters or even heavy draped curtains. An awful lot of your passive solar gains will be given back through the glazing at night.

Problem No 2. In climates like the UK, you can’t get more than a proportion of your winter space heating from solar radiation. It’s often estimated to be in between 20% and 35% of the total space heating load. It’s difficult to increase this proportion because if you insulate the house massively, you reduce the overall heat load but, in so doing, you also reduce the useful contribution from solar gain. Why? Because a massively insulated house shortens the period for which you require space heating to the just the very coldest months of the year, precisely the time when passive solar has the least energy on offer.

Problem No 3 concerns winter holidays. If you were to go on holiday for a while and turn the heating off, then all the heat stored in your high mass building will leak away. This is something I have learned from bitter experience, having twice returned to a freezing cold house in the depths of winter to find that it takes 48 hours of continuous heating for it to become comfortable. And that’s in a house that has been built using heavy masonry materials only on the ground floor.

The phenomenon at work here is referred to as coolth. That is what happens when the surrounding surfaces are relatively cool and you yourself radiate a lot of your own body heat out towards them. This makes you feel colder than the air temperature suggests. As the surfaces warm up, you radiate less, which in turn makes you feel warmer.

In winter, coolth is bad news and takes a lot of energy to eliminate. But in summer, it’s a very different story. The physics at work in summer is no different to what happens in winter – you feel cooler than the air temperature because you are radiating large amounts of heat towards a cool surface. Because of this, the high massers contend that you need a lot less air conditioning in a high mass house. Not that we use a lot of air conditioning in the UK yet, but global warming is expected to change all that very soon. In the USA, the summer cooling demand is almost as large as that for winter heating so an ability to cope with this energy load is likely to become a significant part of our future fuel bills.

However, there is a snag here as well. Call it Problem No 4. During a prolonged hot spell, the structure eventually achieves equilibrium with the surrounding air temperature. Consequently, your body stops radiating heat away and the coolth effect vanishes. A massive structure will still tend to even out the difference between day and night time temperatures, this is true, but this means that whilst you will feel marginally cooler in the day time, you will feel just a little bit hotter during the night. Now whilst this is not a problem in offices and schools, it is with housing, an awful lot of which is empty during the day. Now, the high massers argue that air conditioning is less likely to be turned on in a heavy house because of the coolth effect, but methinks they are exaggerating the effect of the phenomenon. There is no coolth to be had in the middle of the night during a heatwave.

So, as regards low energy building strategies, I believe thermal mass is a classic case of the curate’s egg — i.e. it’s good in parts. It’s probably seen at its best in places which are occupied mostly during the daylight hours — schools, offices, workshops. It can be a useful technique to employ with buildings in constant use such as hospitals and rest homes and, indeed, some housing. But to get any benefit, these homes must be occupied throughout the year and throughout the day. Or, as we have learned to say, 24/7/365. If the occupation is going to be intermittent then there is every chance that high mass can end up being an energy drain.
“I am not suggesting that the thermal mass theory is incorrect or that the science is rubbish. I am simply pointing out that some of the claims made by the heavy massers are exaggerated. Its very similar to the arguments about whether underfloor heating uses more or less energy than radiators. The answer to both questions is it depends. Constantly occupied buildings benefit from thermal mass, whilst intermittently occupied ones are better built as  lightweight structures with quick radiator heating systems. Note that the pro-thermal mass studies, as far as I can tell, are always carried out assuming the buildings are in constant use. I think you would get very different results from computer modelling if your occupancy assumptions were changed to match a DINKY household. Then thermal mass could easily be shown to be a net energy burden. It all depends on the parameters you set.”

– Mark Brinkley

Taken from: http://uktfa.com/thermal-mass-in-housing/

A Sustainable Architect, Mark Reynolds

Michael Reynolds is a highly versatile and prolific eco-architect, based In New Mexico, USA. He believes in the sustainable use of materials and the earth’s precious resources, and designs wonderful houses, offices and habitats of all kinds on this abiding principle. Reynolds has received increased worldwide attention due to being the focus of a documentary, ‘Garbage Warrior’, that follows his work and methods.

He is known as “radically sustainable” due to his criticism of the profession of architecture worldwide as being wasteful, and in his ability to design from an understanding of self-sustainability, i.e. that the building and the humans who use it should be able to support themselves energy-wise and resource-wise (water and food) using the structure as the principal resource.

His background: Education & Early Ideas

Reynolds graduated in 1969 in architecture from the University of Cincinatti. His thesis on building from unconventional materials was published in an architectural journal, and he started building structures for himself, and then for clients.

He realised during his studies and early designs that any so-called object of waste, be it a car tyre or an empty plastic or glass bottle, becomes as powerful and as important as a brick or any other conventional building material, if handled as such. His way of working is to fill the ‘waste’ object with sand or earth, and see it as an essential part of a bigger structure.

One of his earliest projects, the ‘Thumb House’, was completed in 1972, and used wired-together beer bottles. These then had a layer of mortar, and then plaster overlay. This gave rise to his term ‘Earthship Biotecture’, which has become the key term for his way of working, which has in turn inspired many others to build structures in this way, around the world.

Later Projects and Growing Support

Reynolds has continued to improve upon his idea, and each new project develops the work further. Solar panels and geothermal heating of the walls, also from the daily heat of the sun, are now a standard part of each projects design. Reynolds was given valuable support in the 1980’s when several high-profile American actors commissioned Earthship houses from him. He become known as a ‘Green Hero’, and has published at least 5 books on sustainable architecture and specifically the Earthship style.

Buying an ‘Earthship’

Reynolds has pioneered Earthships being bought and built from a kit, with instruction from supplied materials, designs and plans. They can be shipped from his practise anywhere in the world, and can be tailor-made to local conditions, and then finished to the client’s specification. They are to be lived in and enjoyed around the Globe, in a variety of hot and cold living conditions, and are very beautiful, totally sustainable, ultimate ‘eco’ homes.

Reynolds on Reynolds

Speaking about one of his new projects, The Phoenix, in the documentary film about him (Garbage Warrior), Reynolds said: “There’s nothing coming into this house, no power lines, no gas lines, no sewage lines coming out, no water lines coming in, no energy being used.

The house uses water from a well – approximately 6,000 gallons worth. It also have internal space designed for growing food, with drip irrigation systems.

“What these kind of houses are doing is taking every aspect of your life and putting it into your own hands… a family of four could totally survive here without having to go to the store.”

Taken from: http://www.sustainablebuild.co.uk/a-sustainable-architect-casestudy-michael-reynolds.html