Larkfleet Smart Flood Home

Larkfleet in conjunction with other consortium partners has recently delivered the Startlink
lightweight building system. Its aim is to revolutionise house-building and meet Sustainability
Code 6 criteria for overall thermal resistance and air-tightness.
Startlink is a pultruded glass reinforced composite component kit which can be rapidly
assembled into a wide variety of low-rise building forms without metal fastenings. The
Startlink lightweight (20% the weight of conventional construction) building system is stable,
inert and impervious to moisture, requiring only the addition of insulation to build houses.
With appropriate insulation, the Startlink lightweight building system house has lower
embodied energy than a conventional timber frame building (containing kiln-dried, irrigated
wood and raised from mass concrete footings). It avoids site waste (20-25% of all UK waste)
and reduces shipping and assembly costs because of its light weight.
Due to its low weight and novel ring beam foundation system, one potential spinoff market it
could open up is construction on Flood Risk land. It is envisaged that in the event of potential
flooding the lightweight house could be lifted up clear of the water. Beyond the scope of this
proof of market project additional enabling innovation would be required to develop the
lifting system based on active or passive actuation.
The proposed project will assess the commercial viability of the lifting lightweight house and
deliver an outline specification for future research and development.