A Cornish timber frame specialist is using the Actis Hybrid insulation system on a project overlooking St. Ives.

Not only has Ellie Peart, Director of Timber Frame - Design and Build, designed a stunning upside down house to take maximum advantage of the views over Carbis Bay, she also helped secure planning permission when the landowners had trouble getting approval.

Indeed, helping would-be self-builders get approval in difficult or unusual circumstances is something of a speciality for Peart and her team who come up with clever design ideas which tick the planners’ boxes while delighting the client.

Her skills have even been sought as far away as the capital, with one project in Epping Forest gaining the go-ahead after the landowner had failed to gain planning consent for a quarter of a century.

Peart’s combination of designing the house in a vernacular style and incorporating an adjoining garden to provide a bigger overall land footprint sealed the deal for the £1 million energy efficient home.

Back in Cornwall, the completed structure at St Ives made its way from Timber Frame DAB’s Callington factory in mid-April to its chosen destination – and the construction team finishing on site in May. The overall project should be completed in late autumn.

Peart and her co-director Mel Peart love using Actis Hybrid products – and have described this project as their favourite so far.

“We always encourage our clients to use the Actis range - quite simply because they do a marvellous insulating job, produce minimum waste which is easy to dispose of and they are easy to install – and to round it off Actis insulation is excellent value for money,” she said.

“The Actis Hybrid system is incredibly easy to install and the financial savings over other forms of insulation used to meet the same U-value can be quite substantial. On several occasions we have used the full system – Boost’R Hybrid, Hybris and H Control Hybrid – and on others a combination of Hybris with other vapour control layers and breather membranes.

“It’s such a versatile product which performs very well. I think everyone agrees that the main benefits of Actis from the installer’s point of view are cleanliness and hardly any wastage at all. From the building designer’s perspective, its performance and flexibility with regard to reducing thermal bridging are probably top of the list.”

The stone walled, slate roofed four bedroom Carbis Bay house is insulated with 90mm Hybris and vapour control layer H Control Hybrid on the walls and 170mm Hybris and HControl Hybrid in the roof.

The house should end up with a U-value of 0.16 in the walls and 0.13 in the roof.