So, we’re taking the heat from the ground and boosting it with a heat pump to heat the environment through the bores. Effectively, how it works is that for every square metre of floor space, you drill a lineal metre into the ground so, to cater for the 800 m² floor area, we’ve drilled eight bores 100m deep into solid rock. We decided to heat the house using a ground-source heating system. The client wanted a house that’s able to maintain 28 to 29 degrees Celsius in the winter, because he spends a lot of time in Asia and wanted a warm environment but, with 800m² of internal space that includes large voids, big spans and wide open areas, as well as lots of glazing and cold winters, we needed some pretty modern, state-of-the-art heating systems. Yes, our client had a pretty specific brief regarding the services, which created a bit of the challenge for us as the design and construction team. Was the installation of the services a big challenge, given the size of this project and the extreme climate in which it’s sited? While we haven’t used the rock in the actual building, we’ve utilised some of the rock in the landscape and to retain the front of the property. We actually had to blast and cut the rock out and there was around 1,000 tons that came out of the build. The excavation of the building was particularly complex, because we had to excavate into solid rock. There is also more than 500m³ of concrete in the building, including 30 cubic metres of concrete just suspended over the front entry, and pulling all of that together with an engineering solution that responds to the architecture was a challenge. We’ve had to engineer a ballast roof to accommodate tons and tons of gravel, which, when you fly over or if you’re up on the ski fields looking down, makes it quite hard to pick out. The appearance of the roof is to look light but actually it’s quite heavy. Peter: The internal environment is 800m², plus there are around 200m² of terraces and decks, so the house has about 1,000m² in total – it’s large! But, the complexities of the build are largely driven by the fact that it is very top-heavy, so there’s a lot of weight in the roof structure. ArchiPro spoke with the builder, Peter Campbell from Triplestar about the challenges his team faced at Hidden Island Retreat, a house designed by Mason & Wales Architects.ĪrchiPro: What made Hidden Island Retreat such a complex build? Carved into rock within a delicate mountainous landscape, this month’s Project of the Month needed great skill and experience to construct such an incredible home.
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