Groundbreaking Passivhaus leisure complex at St Sidwell’s Point

15/1/21: TClarke engineers are developing the world’s first multi-climate, large scale Passivhaus Leisure Centre. Achieving 70% more energy efficiency when compared to a design with standard compliance: “this is ground-breaking engineering” Divisional Director, Philippe Fendler reports.

Passivhaus is a building performance standard of efficiency, which reduces the building’s ecological footprint resulting in ultra-low energy buildings at the same time as focusing on a chemical-free, healthy environment for its occupants.

The building will be encapsulated within a super insulated ‘envelope’ from within which we will control, regulate, and operate all environmental systems. Each zone has its own plant and environmental controls and parameters, optimally designed to operate at their peak efficiency and performance. Unlike other Passivhaus buildings around the world which have no active cooling, there are multiple ‘cool and dry’ zones where cooling is provided via a simultaneous heating and cooling heat pump. For the ‘wet and humid’ zones, the high thermal efficiency of the building allows for much higher humidity levels than other Swimming Pools thus further lowering energy costs.

Others have worked to Passivhaus standards but what makes this project a world’s first is that our engineers are incorporating multiple temperature zones, and this is groundbreaking.

We are proud to be delivering another industry-leading piece of engineering, working with ambitious and capable partners, and deepening our in-house expertise and knowledge. In years to come Passivhaus standard may become the norm but we will know that it happened first, here in Exeter and that TClarke engineers delivered it.