New build · Somerset Levels
No. 02 of 20
A Passivhaus raised on a concrete plinth above the flood line, beside the rhyne and a row of old pollarded willows.
See the section and the flood line
Kate and Joe farmed the fields round Godney for twenty years and wanted to stay on the land when they stopped. The field floods most winters. So the house sits on a plinth 900mm above the highest water anyone remembers, and it needs almost no heating at all.
01
A flat field at the end of a drove, with a rhyne along one edge and a line of willows that Joe has pollarded every few years since he was a boy. Most winters the field sits under a few inches of water for a week or two. We read the flood marks on the gateposts and talked to the drainage board before we drew a line.
02
The field is in flood zone 3, where the starting answer is no. We showed the floor would sit above the hundred-year flood level with room for climate change, that the plinth would not push water onto the neighbours, and that the family could walk out along the drove if the water came up. Approved under delegated powers in nine weeks.
03
The timber frame was made in a workshop in Street as insulated wall cassettes and craned onto the plinth in six days, so the shell was dry before the autumn rain. The airtightness test came in at 0.3 air changes an hour, half the Passivhaus limit. Last winter the heating cost £190.
“We watched the field flood in February from the sofa, warm, with the heating off. That still feels like a magic trick.”
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