Riverside Primary, a multi-million pound school building, is one of the first Passivhaus-standard primary schools in Scotland, and the first to achieve official certification. 

Located in North Perth, it brings together North Muirton and Balhousie primary schools, providing modern learning space for 500 children with provision for a nursery and additional support needs. 

The project is part of Perth & Kinross Council’s ongoing capital programme of school upgrades and improvements through hub East Central Scotland Limited (hubco) to enhance the environment for learning and teaching across the area.

Multiple benefits 

Passivhaus is a tried-and-tested solution to deliver new school buildings that are not only futureproofed and optimised for net-zero but, crucially, consistently perform as designed.

Warm in winter and cool in summer, Passivhaus buildings are designed to be comfortable all year round, with minimal energy usage and carbon emissions. As a result, they are truly energy efficient, environmentally friendly, and economical to run. 

And for pupils and teachers at Riverside Primary, the benefits don’t stop there. With optimal temperatures and excellent indoor air quality supporting better health, wellbeing, and cognitive performance, the new school will provide the children with a first-class learning environment. 

Hot water strategy

Instrumental in forming the energy strategy for the new school building was the multi-disciplinary design, engineering, and project delivery company BakerHicks Motherwell, appointed by Perth & Kinross Council to provide mechanical and electrical design services for principal contractor Robertson Tayside.

Baxi’s Heatrae Sadia point-of-use electric water heaters are helping deliver energy efficiency standards at the school.

David Coulter is the Associate Engineer and Certified Passivhaus Designer at BakerHicks. He explained: “The hot water strategy was one of the main challenges when designing the system as we needed to avoid large scale energy usage. 

“We wanted to explore using all-electric point-of-use solutions that would only generate energy when required, for example during break or lunch times. So, we asked Baxi for help with the solution.”

Baxi’s public health technical sales team worked with David to identify the selection of equipment required to meet the hot water demand efficiently at Riverside Primary.  

In total, seven Heatrae Sadia Multipoint 15 units, six Multipoint Eco 30, three Hotflo 10, two Hotflo 15, 24 Aquaheat 7, as well as a Megaflo Eco cylinder have been installed in the new school building.

“We had used Heatrae Sadia products before and were familiar with their reputation for high quality, robust performance,” continued David. 

“A key benefit of these water heaters is that the units are sized, thereby providing more flexibility to meet the required volume. But equally importantly is the excellent technical and aftersales support that we know we can expect from the Baxi team – and which proved invaluable on this project.” 

Passivhaus certification

The best way to demonstrate that a building meets Passivhaus standards is through certification. It is a rigorous quality assurance compliance process that includes tests to ensure the targets are met. 

Certification is only issued by an accredited independent Passivhaus certifier, in this instance WARM, if the defined criteria are achieved.

“It’s an exacting process,” David explained. “We needed to supply detailed calculations and evidence relating to the energy values of the selected technologies. And this is where we really relied on Baxi for support. They were great, working closely with us to provide all the information required for certification, and ready to help at every stage of the project.”  

With Passivhaus certification now successfully achieved and Riverside Primary due to open its doors to pupils this year, Perth & Kinross Council has achieved its commitment to enhance education provision for children north of Perth and taken a step closer to its net-zero carbon ambitions. 

“The very low heat losses of our Heatrae Sadia products were a key component in the overall project,” said Baxi’s Stephen Lynch. “We are extremely proud to have played a part in this ground-breaking Passivhaus primary school.”