Contemporary Coastal Villa
Lyme Regis, West Dorset
This project was a replacement dwelling located high in Lyme Regis with views to Lyme Bay and along the Jurassic coast. Nearing completion the house is looking crisp and internal spaces are proving to be as imagined.
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​The existing house was a 60s bungalow squashed into the corner of the substantial site, making no use of the space and views available. The client came to us to design this large new build dwelling in Lyme Regis which would take advantage of the fantastic position this site has to offer.
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The layout of the house is 'upside down' so that the key living spaces, master bedroom and balconies at first floor look out across Lyme bay, with the other bedrooms and utility rooms at ground floor opening out to the gardens.
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While the house has a very contemporary form, it relates to the villa vernacular of Lyme Regis through its light materials (render, stone and aluminium) and will incorporate the latest in sustainable technologies to be a flagship example of contemporary residential architecture in Lyme.
Orchard end also uses an innovative HPV (Heat Recovery ventilation) and HPW (Air to water heat pump) tandem system for its space heating, ventilation and hot water requirements.
Recently the trend in high air-tightness houses has been to use an MVHR (Mechanical Ventilation and Heat recovery) combined with and ASHP (Air Source Heat Pump) for ventilation, underfloor heating and hot water. The historical issue with MVHR is the many ducts that have to radiate throughout the house to all of the rooms, while ASHP linked underfloor heating is slow to get up to or change temperature, and the pump itself sits outside your home.
HPV goes one step further than an MVHR by also delivering your main heating also via the supply air ducts, so that no further heat sources (underfloor heating or radiators) are normally necessary, as the air supplied is warm enough to be your main heating and the units are designed to provide higher volumes of air. Each room has either extract or supply vents, and warm fresh air is pulled into all the rooms by the flow to the extracts. The HPW works much like an ASHP, but instead of recovering heat from outdoors, it uses the same stale air recovered from the rooms of the house to heat the water, ready for supply back to the house, minimising the raw energy input. Because the HPV and HPW can work in tandem, they use fewer branched ducts throughout the house, and room temperatures can be altered far quicker than with radiators or underfloor heating.
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