MBC offers total passive house envelope solutions

This article was originally published in issue 50 of Passive House Plus magazine. Want immediate access to all back issues and exclusive extra content? Click here to subscribe for as little as €15, or click here to receive the next issue free of charge

The Gloucestershire-based company has successfully delivered dozens of certified passive house projects across the UK. Expanding its integrated approach, the company now offers triple glazed windows, enabling the delivery of a complete passive house envelope, including its Passive Raft Foundation system and Passive Twin Wall Timber Frame system with guaranteed airtightness. “Many passive house projects succeed or fail at the junctions between different building elements,” said Lee Broomhall, sales director at MBC Timber Frame.

“Critical interface details can be compromised when multiple contractors are responsible for different parts of the thermal envelope. We eliminate those risks by providing the complete thermal envelope solution, taking responsibility for every thermal junction and airtightness seal – from foundations to windows. This integrated approach ensures continuity of insulation and airtightness exactly where passive houses most commonly fail.” To showcase the precision and sustainability of its methods, MBC regularly hosts open days at its manufacturing facility, allowing clients, architects, and specifiers to see its high-performance, low-embodied carbon systems in action.

Previous analysis by Passive House Plus has shown that cellulose-insulated timber frame buildings had the lowest embodied carbon of eleven different wall types assessed, including cavity walls, insulating concrete formwork, externally insulated single-leaf masonry, and PIR-insulated timber frame.

Lee Broomhall said the company has worked with the University of Lincoln to produce a whole-life carbon analysis of its system, which will be published shortly and summarised in Passive House Plus. “At MBC, sustainability is embedded in everything we do,” said Broomhall.

An open day at MBC’s factory in Gloucestershire

“While passive house certification guarantees exceptional energy performance, we’re equally committed to minimising embodied carbon across the entire building lifecycle. That’s why we’ve invested in rigorous academic research to quantify our environmental impact. The data from Lincoln University will provide our clients with transparent, third-party verified carbon metrics that demonstrate the true environmental benefits of our approach.

We believe you can’t manage what you don’t measure, so this research will help guide our continuous improvement towards truly sustainable construction”.