North Ayrshire Passivhaus Primary School first
Montgomerie Park Primary School in Irvine is North Ayrshire Council's first Passivhaus certified school. The project was procured through hub South West Scotland framework and has been partially funded as part of the Scottish Government’s £2bn Learning Real Estate Investment Programme (LEIP).
The Montgomerie Park school is designed to and certified against Passivhaus criteria, to achieve the required LEIP funding, minimise operational energy consumption and contribute to North Ayrshire Council's ambition towards Net Zero Carbon. The school opened to pupils in August 2024 and received Passivhaus certification in 2025.
The school serves a growing community as part of the residential masterplan area of Montgomerie Park and comprises 12 classrooms, early learning facilities, gymnasium incorporating flexible performance areas, and dining facilities along with outdoor learning spaces including a 7-a-side all weather pitch..The school is projected to use 60-80% less energy than a typical school building, resulting in carbon reduction, and lower operational costs.
PHT Patron ECD Architects was Passivhaus Designer on the scheme, with PHT member Robertson Construction as the Contractor and PHT Patron WARM as Passivhaus Certifier.
Key stats
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By building to Passivhaus standards North Ayrshire Council is making a firm commitment to both its net zero drive and the education of young learners. Andy McLinden, Robertson Construction |
Construction
The school is built using steel frame construction, with brick outer leaf. Mineral wool insulation was installed outwith the SFS system, to minimise thermal bridging.
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Designed to Passivhaus standards, Montgomerie Park School provides the highest levels of thermal comfort and healthy indoor air conditions – the ideal environment for children to learn and to concentrate. As North Ayrshire Council’s first Passivhaus school, the building itself provides education and inspiration to staff and pupils alike, demonstrating the way forward for the built environment. Jennifer Rooney, Certified Passivhaus Designer, ECD Architects |
U-values |
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Roof: 0.092 W/m2K Flat roof system |
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Wall: 0.142 W/m2K Steel frame, brick outer leaf, rockwool insulation |
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Floor: 0.104 W/m2K Concrete, XPS insulation |
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Achieving Passivhaus certification for Montgomerie Park Primary School required strict adherence to passive design, low air permeability and enhanced thermal performance. The primary challenge in meeting rigorous passive, thermal and airtight requirements is applying such methodologies at a large scale, whilst not losing focus on providing high quality educational spaces. Melissa Hart, Architect, JM Architects |
Building performance
Designed energy performance |
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Airtightness n50 (≤ 0.6ACH @ 50 Pa)
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0.45 @ 50 Pa
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Space Heating Demand (≤ 15 kWh/m².a)
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15 kWh/m².a
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Heating Load (≤ 10 W/m²)
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11 W/m²
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Primary Energy Demand (≤ 120 kWh/m².a)
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93 kWh/m².a
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Primary Energy Renewable (PER) Demand (≤ 60 kWh/m².a*)
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73 kWh/m².a
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Primary Energy Renewable Generation
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21 kWh/m².a
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*+/-15 kWh/m².a allowance if offset by energy generation. See Passivhaus criteria.
Services
Heating & hot water: Space heating is predominantly via radiators with the exception of in the gym/dining areas where there is underfloor heating. In both cases, heating is provided by air source heat pumps. Domestic hot water is split between being provided by air source heat pumps and direct electric heating (point-of-use heaters). The reason for this was where there was a large concentrated area of the plan requiring domestic hot water, such as the kitchen, it was most efficient to use heat pumps, however for more remote areas of the plan, such as individual or small clusters of sinks in resource areas or toilets, the distribution heat losses to get to these areas did not balance with the hot water demand, therefore point of use heaters was most efficient in these cases.
Ventilation: MVHR (mechanical ventilation with heat recovery) systems deliver ventilation to the school. The ventilation system was also a hybrid between 3 larger air handling units serving the kitchens, gym, dining room and classrooms, and 6 smaller MVHR units for areas with different use patterns, such as the nursery spaces, staff areas and community rooms.
Summer comfort: A brise soleil was fixed to the south façade to ensure good summer comfort. The brise soleil structure stands alone from the building to avoid thermal bridging.
Renewables: There is a large array of solar PV panels on the school's roof.
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Montgomerie Park offers a fantastic learning environment for our young people. We are proud of our school estate across North Ayrshire and this modern, eco-friendly school in Irvine is a huge asset to not only the pupils and families but also staff that work there. Councillor Shaun Macaulay, North Ayrshire Council |
Challenges & lessons learned
Early stage design: Early consideration of Passivhaus design aspects whilst also identifying mutual benefits for the educational project brief were critical. This enabled optimally designed internal spaces in terms of orientation, adjacencies and natural daylighting. Careful design and coordination with contractors to construct and regularly test the enhanced thermal and airtight envelope were paramount.
Steel frame: There was a lot of discussion around insulating the steel frame, including condensation risk analysis and cold bridging through insulating within the SFS (steel frame system) layer. Ultimately, all of the insulation was moved outwith the SFS zone to alleviate these issues. However, this then limited with the insulation thickness due to the length of wall ties available for the facing brick façade finish. The project team agreed that the location of the insulation was ultimately the right decision, but it did have the efefct of making the wall U-value of the walls quite high, close to 0.15W/m2K, which had to be carefully modelled in the PHPP.
Kitchen ventilation: At the time it was difficult to specify a Passivhaus certified MVHR unit to serve a commercial kitchen, so the team had to select a separate supply and extract vent solution with run-around coils. This was challenging in terms of making sure that what was designed and installed would work and could be sufficiently evidenced for the Passivhaus certification. It was also important to ensure that the dampers installed for airtightness would not be impacted by grease build up from the kitchen atmosphere.
Free-flow with outside: The client wanted free flow for children between the nursery and the playground, so the project team had to find solutions for managing this, so that the external doors would not be left open. The client did not want a draft lobby to obstruct free-flow, so the project team specified an automatic opening and closing solution operated by a push button, which also helped with the weight of the triple glazed doors for the young children.
Rooflights: Rooflights were a key design feature to get natural light into spaces like the circulation and social stair deep in the plan, however in modelling these were found to cause significant overheating issues and heat loss in comparison to the main roof build-up, so the project team went through a process of refining these to get the best balance between the natural light and architectural effect and the performance of the building.
Architect’s viewThe quality of internal spaces, distribution of natural light and continuity of learning environments from internal to external spaces has resulted in a new facility welcomed by staff, pupils and the wider community. The new school has been designed with end user requirements and sustainability as key priorities and is the first Passivhaus primary school in North Ayrshire Council. Through careful planning and detailing, we have harmonised pedagogical principles and Passivhaus technicalities. Working closely with NAC and key stakeholder groups, we developed the learner’s journey from early years into primary years. This involved careful adjacencies and informal transition spaces to maximise flexibility. A key consideration for the design, both from a pedagogical and Passivhaus perspective, was a consistent approach to formal teaching spaces by placing all 12 primary classrooms and early learning rooms to face south. Not only does this maximise beneficial solar gain and natural daylighting; it also provides a direct relationship between internal teaching spaces and the external playground areas. Bounding the open plan classrooms is the central circulation spine top-lit by several rooflights and floor voids to draw natural light to the ground level. From the central circulation, a series of supporting informal learning spaces such as general-purpose rooms and library are accessed. At the entrance of the building, the reception area looks onto a central social stair with a generous rooflight above. The fixed seating is orientated towards the performance space which is dual-sided and can also open towards the combined games and dining halls to cater for larger occupancies, served by retractable seating. A drop-down curtain arrangement provides flexibility between the sports hall and dining area to suit a preferred timetable. Melissa Hart, Architect, JM Architects |
Key team
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It's brilliant to see North Ayrshire Council's first Passivhaus school now completed and certified. Montgomerie Park is one of a new wave of Scottish Passivhaus schools coming through the pipeline, thanks to Scottish Future's Trust LEIP funding building performance requirements.
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The projects below are all Passivhaus-certified educational buildings. Discover more projects on our Passivhaus Schools & Educational Buildings.
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Further information
Montgomerie Park Primary School
Passivhaus Benefits Guide & costs research
Passivhaus for Educational Buildings
Scottish Passivhaus Equivalent
Previous PHT story: Scottish Schools lead the way! - 20 October 2023
Previous PHT story: Riverside Primary - a Passivhaus first for Scotland - 23 June 2023
Previous PHT story: Scottish Schools lead largescale Passivhaus – 8 April 2022
Previous PHT story: Scottish Secondary strives for Passivhaus first – 11 March 2021
4th April 2026
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