The award-winning Moonstone Project, designed using GRAPHISOFT’s ArchiCAD BIM software, is one of the UK’s best performing houses, exceeding the UK’s Code 6 Sustainable Homes Guide; the house also exceeds the German ‘Passivhaus’ top standard for energy efficiency by over 65%. At 16,000 square feet (1,500 square meters), with a third of its structure underground, Moonstone meets a zero carbon footprint – an incredible accomplishment considering the house is 21 times larger than the average UK home.
The house has no heating demand, is not connected to mains water or sewerage, uses no fossil fuels, and is lit entirely by ultra low LED lighting. The building is self- sufficient in its energy requirements by utilizing an array of discretely positioned PV panels, which supply more electricity than the house uses. The surplus is fed back into the grid, generating an estimated income of £3,500/year. “ArchiCAD BIM is a tool we definitely could not have lived without,” said John Croft, owner of Moonstone. “It certainly saved us tens of thousands of pounds in cost savings on the project as we were able to analyze any design mistakes, clashes of materials, know where the MEP runs were going to go as well as evaluate building performance,”he added. The project also utilized GRAPHISOFT’s EcoDesigner, which performs dynamic building energy evaluations, including annual consumption, carbon footprint and monthly energy balance. A free Best Practice InfoKit is available from Applecore Designs – a GRAPHISOFT partner, which supported the Moonstone Project design team. The kit includes the Moonstone Project case study in .pdf format; image gallery; Moonstone Virtual Building Explorer (VBE) interactive model download, and instructional keyboard card. The InfoKit can be downloaded from http://infokit.applecoredownloads.com/moonstone worldwide/.
