4 bed detached house for sale

Dale Road, Forest Row, East Sussex RH18

A wonderful 4 bedroom contemporary detached home designed by the architect Jeff Morehen for his own family, which is set in this highly sought after road within easy reach of the centre of the village and Ashdown Forest.

Hall, Sitting room, Library, Kitchen/dining/family room. Principal bedroom with en-suite bathroom and dressing room.
2 further bedrooms, Shower room, Cloakroom
Annexe with living room/kitchen, bedroom and en-suite shower room.
Utility room, Plant and drying room, Integral double garage.
Attractive garden of 0.66 acre with lawn, terrace, borders and orchard with wild flowers, Greenhouse and garden shed.
Sustainable design, a-rated for energy performance.
Property
The house was finished in 2020 and was designed to merge into its surroundings. A covered porch has a wide door which opens to a hall with a douglas fir staircase leading to the main living areas. There is a wide corridor with a sand stone wall and a library at one end, which is oversailing with a cantilever corner window overlooking the garden. The sitting room has 2 sets of sliding doors to the terrace and a fireplace housing a wood burner. The kitchen/breakfast/family room is the heart of the home with fitted floor and wall units, Caesarstone worktops, 2 ovens, microwave, fridge/freezer, island unit with storage, 5 ring gas hob, woodburning stove and large sliding door to terrace. The principal bedroom has a window seat, well appointed en-suite bathroom and a dressing room. There are 2 further bedrooms and a family shower room. Opposite the library is the annexe which could be used as additional bedrooms for the house. It comprises a living room/kitchen with a woodburning stove, bedroom and shower room. On the lower ground floor is a utility room, drying room, plant room and integral double garage which has a roller door and EV charging point.

Outside
There is a drive for parking in front of the garage. Beside the drive is a little orchard under sown with wild flowers and a secondary access for parking. The main garden is to the rear with a retractable pergola over a flagstone terrace with an external fireplace. The lawn is enclosed by hedging with trees and shrubs including spruce, azalea and rhododendron. There are borders, a fruit/vegetable cage, greenhouse and garden shed.

Tenure, Local Authorities and Services
Freehold. All mains services. Gas heating. Wealden DC: East Sussex CC: Council tax band G. Energy efficiency band A. Fibre to the property. Array of solar panels with a battery.

Directions
Take B2110 Hartfield Road and after about 1⁄4 mile turn right into Ashdown Road. At the top turn right into Dale Road and the house will be found towards the end on the left.
Local Amenities & Communications
The A22 runs through the centre of the village providing good access to M25 and London. The railway station at East Grinstead offers services to London Bridge/Victoria in about 54 minutes. Gatwick is about 13 miles away.

Forest Row has excellent local amenities including shops, restaurants, sports clubs and Royal Ashdown Forest Golf Club. East Grinstead and Tunbridge Wells have a further range of shops, transport and recreational facilities. There is an excellent selection of schools in the surrounding area, including Michael Hall which is in within walking distance. Ashdown Forest is the largest free public access space in the South East and is a great place for walking and enjoying spectacular views over the Sussex countryside.

A summary of the key design elements:

Exposed oak beams and ceiling linings.
Board-finished concrete to feature walls and ceilings.
Bespoke oak finish kitchen with Ceasar-stone bench tops from leading designer and manufacturer, Kitchen Architecture.
35mm x 400mm Douglas Fir timber flooring with natural soap-finish throughout. All rooms utilise single-length board including 9 metre lengths to kitchen/dining/family room.
Gaggenau kitchen appliances (conventional oven, steam oven, integrated fridge) with Barazza flush-fitting gas-hob and Seimens integrated microwave oven.
Integrated Quooker boiling and filtered water tap to kitchen.
Stuv integrated and free-standing high-performance wood-burning stoves to family, living and annexe living spaces.
External fireplace to terrace.
Bespoke integrated wardrobes to bedrooms and integrated custom shelving to library and kitchen.
Microcement finishes to bathrooms.
Vola copper-finish taps and accessories to ensuite bathroom including sculptural free-standing Cielo bathtub and twin Cielo his/hers basins.
Tesla Powerwall battery that stores energy generated by solar or from the grid to use customisable power modes to power the devices and appliances in the home day and night, even during outages.
Dedicated plant room to house building services and infrastructure.
Slim framed and frameless double-glazing to windows and sliding doors from UK’s premier luxury glazier, iq Glass.

An innovative articulated design carefully placed within the verdant site to ensure retention of all existing trees and established plantings.
A palette of natural materials (internal and external) including exposed timbers (Kebony, Oak, Douglas Fir) and locally-sourced Wealden Sandstone throughout to create a biophilic design response to increase occupant connectivity to the natural environment (landscape and natural light).
An highly sustainable integrated design with a vast array of initiatives to deliver an a-rated energy performance - list separately.
Integrated bespoke joinery throughout.
EV charging point and battery.
A considered landscape approach blending natural, less formal plantings and wild flowers to foster biodiversity, with more formal lawns and extensive cottage garden, fruit trees and greenhouse, providing a range of sustainably home grown fruits and vegetables.
Whole-house ventilation system with heat-recovery.
Integrated clerestory windows to north facing rooms and extensive skylights to corridor and entrance hall to enhance natural light.
Sedum green roof to provide rainwater harvesting whilst increasing biodiversity and encouraging insect and bird life.
Efficient zoned hydronic radiant heating utilised throughout.
Sustainability Credentials

a-rated for energy performance (only 2% of new UK housing achieves this rating)
- Whilst the house has an above average ratio of glass to solid walls (a desire from the outset to maximise engagement with the garden – an important consideration to foster health and well-being), in close collaboration with the engineer, we beefed up the insulation of the walls, floors and roofs to improve their u-values and thus mitigate the losses through the glass. Wall u-values range from 0.15 to 0.19, roof u-values range from 0.09 to 0.14. (As an example, the flat roof of the concrete pavilion to the south of the building has a depth of insulation ranging from 330mm to 420mm).
- We have chosen high performing glazing with thermally broken metal frames – the best performing double glazing we could afford. It has a u-value range of 1.28 to 1.7, with an average of 1.6.
- All south facing windows are fitted with solar control glass – glass that has a metal oxide coating on the on the internal face of the external pane of the double-glazed unit. This allows the sunlight in whilst reflecting solar radiation.
- We achieved an air tightness score of 2.58. A ‘good’ score for a new build would be 3-4 (for passivhaus it’s 1). Achieving a low air tightness score is almost entirely dependent on careful architectural detailing and the quality of construction. The fitting of doors and windows in openings needs to be precise, with all joints sealed or taped. All joints in the osb (Oriented Standard Board) that forms the walls of the timber frame were taped.
- With an airtight building, ventilation is key to prevent condensation. We have a whole house mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery. Moist and stale air is extracted from bathrooms and the heat recovered from it is used to warm fresh air brought in from outside and circulated throughout the house.
- We have a 5.76kW solar array on the south facing flat roof. In the summer months we produce between 70% and 100% of the electricity we use and in the winter months about 15%-40%. Over 12 months we produce on average 50% of the electricity we use. And that includes providing electricity for our EV.
- The solar array is installed on a green roof. This improves the efficiency of the panels by up to 5% by moderating their temperature (counter intuitively, solar panels work less well as they heat up).
- Critical to the success of the solar array is the Tesla battery back-up system. Surplus solar energy generated during the day is stored for use during the evenings. The solar energy is also used to heat our water. It is an intelligent system – for example, when energy is cheap, it will draw energy from the grid to fill the battery for use during peak times, when energy is more expensive.
- The house is currently heated by a combination of conventional gas boiler and wood burning stoves. The rationale for this is twofold. Firstly, we have what is known as ‘commoner’s rights’. We live on the edge of the Ashdown Forest and there is an ancient agreement attached to various pockets of land for the custodians of that land to fell trees as part of the conservators’ forest management. Each year the Forest Ranger identifies trees that need to be removed, we fell them and split the wood that we then season naturally for 2 years. We have chosen the highest performing wood burners we could afford – they are defra approved and burn at 80% efficiency. This level of efficiency, together with the dry seasoned wood means they burn relatively clean (evidenced by the very little soot in the flues when they are cleaned). The timber that we burn is a renewable, sustainable source of energy. Secondly, the demand for heat in this house is extremely low. It rarely gets lower than 18 degrees anywhere in the house. It is unusual for the underfloor heating to be required to supplement the wood burners, except in the deep winter. A gas boiler has a life of approx. 10 years (though ours may be longer given that it doesn’t work as hard as it would have to in a conventional house) and our intention, when it comes to the end of its life, it to replace it with a renewable source of energy (air source maybe?) – by which time the technology for that will have significantly improved and become more affordable.
- The heating throughout the house is zoned so that the temperature of all rooms and circulation spaces can be controlled separately.

Other sustainable design elements
- All north facing rooms have south facing clerestory windows to capture natural light, minimising the need for electric lights in what might otherwise have been dark rooms.
- The glazing on the south side provides solar gain in the winter – increasing the internal temperature during the day by 2-4 degrees. An operable louvred pergola on the south elevation reduces the solar gain and glare in the summer.
- All south facing windows have concealed blinds to help with shading during the day and to shut out the darkness at night.
- Bedroom windows have interlined curtains to provide additional insulation
- The stone and concrete in the house provide thermal mass that heats up during the warmer months and slowing radiates that heat in the cooler months.
- The sedum green roof provides rainwater attenuation and increases biodiversity, encouraging insect and bird life, with a mix of sedum specifically designed to attract bees.
- A rainwater harvesting tank provides water for garden irrigation and toilet flushing. The tank overflows into a large soakaway and only very heavy and prolonged rainfall would cause that to overflow into the land drains. Foul water flows directly to the mains (so no need for a septic tank).
- We have installed interstitial bee blocks and bat boxes in the exterior walls
- Re-wilding of the garden landscape with a wildflower meadow and natural planting to promote biodiversity
- Organic vegetable growing and apple orchard
- Home composting of all kitchen and most garden waste

Selective use of materials
For example:
- All timber is fsc certified. The Kebony, used for both interior and exterior cladding is a softwood that is impregnated with a bio-based liquid and then super heat treated to give it the stability and performance closer to that of hard woods.
- We used concrete with a high ggbs (Ground Granulated Blast-furnace Slag) content. Ggbs is a by-product from the blast furnaces manufacturing iron and replaces cement in the concrete mix. Manufacture of ggbs utilises all the slag and produces no significant waste stream. It improves the quality and durability of concrete and its production is virtually CO2-free. As well as the environmental benefit of utilising a by-product, ggbs replaces something (cement) that is produced by a highly energy-intensive process. By comparison with Portland cement, manufacture of ggbs requires less than a fifth the energy and produces less than a fifteenth of the carbon dioxide emissions. Further ‘green’ benefits are that manufacture of ggbs does not require the quarrying of virgin materials, and if the slag was not used as cement it may well end up in landfill.
- The stone cladding is Wealden Sandstone from a quarry less than 7 miles from the house and is the bi-product of the quarry’s production of refined, cut stone – and, therefore, a natural prosaic and economic material
- The structural insulation used below the floor slab is FoamGlas (cellular glass insulation) which is made from recycled car windscreens.
- High quality ‘green’ paints to reduce off-gassing
- Much of the bespoke oak furniture in the house is made from a dying tree, felled in a neighbour’s garden at the start of our project that we had specifically milled and then seasoned for 3 years in their garage

Demolition and Construction
- The house was demolished by hand to protect bats and reclaim as much of the material from the original house for re-use or recycling
- All waste during construction was separated and recycled or re-used, reducing the number of skips for a similar length of build by approx 60%