BIOHAUS®, Meadow View, Mere
The first fully certified BIOHAUS® home completes in September 2026. Commissioned by The Duchy of Cornwall, Meadow View raises the bar for energy efficiency and sustainability.
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Project Type
Detached home
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Location
Mere, Wiltshire
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Completion Date
September 2026
Meadow View is a new-build rural farmhouse on Duchy of Cornwall land in Mere, Wiltshire. Formerly known as West Swainsford Farm, it is the first home to be built using the HEMSPAN® BIOHAUS® system. This home is a demonstration in what low-carbon construction can achieve.
Commissioned by the Duchy of Cornwall, the project was conceived as an opportunity to explore how low-carbon construction could be integrated into a new home with a traditional rural character, while setting a new standard for energy performance and whole-life carbon.
Meadow View is both a home and a working proof of concept for a new approach to residential construction.
A blueprint for lower-carbon housing
The Duchy of Cornwall has an ambition to become a Net Zero estate by the end of 2032. A key part of that journey is finding practical ways to reduce the carbon impact of new construction across different building types and settings.
The opportunity to build a new farmhouse at Mere provided a chance to test a range of low-carbon building solutions within a familiar rural vernacular.
The brief was ambitious: to deliver an exemplar level of performance that could help establish a blueprint for ultra-low whole-life-carbon residential development at scale.
The approach was to reduce upfront carbon wherever possible, combining timber construction and natural, low-process materials with highly efficient building services and renewable energy generation.
Natural materials, high performance
At the heart of Meadow View is the BIOHAUS® system, a twin-wall structural cassette timber frame, fully filled with natural hemp fibre insulation and incorporating HEMSPAN® Bio Board within the wall build-up.
The building also uses a zero-clinker cement alternative in the raft foundation, alongside natural external finishes including timber cladding, lime render and slate.
Together, these choices significantly reduce the carbon associated with construction while making use of renewable and biogenic materials.
The result is a building designed to sequester more carbon from biogenic sources over its lifetime than is emitted during its construction.
Designed to use less energy
The building envelope has been designed around exceptional thermal performance.
Low U-values, low thermal-bridging psi-values, high levels of airtightness and triple-glazed windows work together to dramatically reduce the energy required to heat the home.
At design stage, a PHPP model indicated near-Passivhaus levels of thermal performance, with an anticipated space-heating demand of just 18 kWh/m²/year.
As tested, the building’s airtightness exceeds the Passivhaus performance requirement, achieving 0.5 air changes per hour (ACH).
The result is a home that requires significantly less energy to maintain a comfortable internal environment than a traditionally constructed residential building.
Generating more energy than it uses
Reducing energy demand is only part of the approach.
Meadow View combines a range of low-carbon heating, ventilation and renewable generation technologies to achieve an overall positive energy balance, meaning the home is designed to generate and export more renewable energy than it uses over the course of a year.
An air source heat pump provides heating and hot water, supplying underfloor heating on the ground floor, radiators on the upper two floors and the hot water cylinder.
Ventilation is provided through a mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) system. A Canadian well duct helps to pre-condition incoming air, supporting efficient ventilation while minimising energy consumption.
Renewable electricity is generated by 12 kWp of solar PV, installed across the two south-facing roof elevations and connected to a battery energy storage system.
A home energy monitoring system will also provide detailed control and visibility of the building’s performance in operation.
The result is an EPC rating of A 114, assessed using the SAP 10 methodology.
Traditional character, different thinking
While the technology within Meadow View is highly considered, the house itself is deliberately rooted in its surroundings.
The building takes its architectural cues from the traditional farmhouse typology and the local materials of the Wiltshire landscape.
Timber, lime render and slate give the house a familiar rural character, demonstrating that low-carbon construction does not require a particular architectural language.
The innovation is largely within the building envelope and services — allowing the house to feel like a home first and a piece of building technology second.
The first BIOHAUS® home
Meadow View will be the first completed home using the HEMSPAN® BIOHAUS® system.
It represents an important step in demonstrating how natural, renewable materials can be combined with modern construction methods to deliver homes that are highly efficient, comfortable and designed for significantly lower whole-life carbon.
For HEMSPAN®, the project is about more than proving that a particular system works.
It is about demonstrating that a different approach to housebuilding can work in practice — on a real site, within a real landscape and as a real home.
From exemplar to scale
Meadow View is not an isolated experiment. Its purpose is to provide practical evidence that low-carbon materials, high-performance building envelopes and renewable technologies can be brought together in a way that is replicable across residential development.
The project offers a blueprint for how the lessons learned from one home can inform a much broader transition towards lower-carbon construction.
