The building consists of three I.T. rooms, two meeting training rooms and then a customer service
point.
Although we'd already done a domestic Passivhaus, working on a larger scale, getting supply
chains, skills in place was the biggest challenge, but we chose a local family contractor who
was up for the challenge and that worked quite well in partnership with Powys County Council
project managers.
Because of its setting on the corner of three counties, means that all three counties make use
of it for things such as training by the university or social services. It's very user friendly.
Prior to moving to Canolfan Hyddgen we were based in an old prefabricated building, which
you thought was fairly comfortable at the time, but obviously now having spent a number
of years in Canolfan Hyddgen then we're starting to really appreciate the comfort levels of
a Passivhaus building.
Combined with the Passivhaus approach we also chose an MMC approach, manufacturing the timber
frame external envelope off site. This helped us in two ways. Building through the Welsh
winter, the poor weather, we could manufacture a good quality, insulated, airtight frame
off site and also working very close to the school in a constrained site, we only had
a two week window to bring all those larger elements in for health and safety.
We get a lot of people that enjoy coming to the building and always make positive comments.