Chamois, Aosta, Italy

Class A4 house at 1800 metres
System: Clivet Smart Living - Sphera EVO 2.0 + ELFORoom2 + Thermostats + Control4 NRG
Year 2023

Air conditioning for the home

Class A4 house at 1800 metres

A true eagle's nest, at an altitude of 1,800 metres, Chamois is the only municipality in Italy, on the mainland, that cannot be reached by car, but only by cable car, on foot, or by small planes. 
Chamois has been listed among the 'Pearls of the Alps', a title that rewards the most virtuous mountain municipalities for environmental sustainability and soft mobility.

How to build a new house in record time, preserving the magic of this timeless place, and how to meet the need for comfort in the difficult context of high altitude while respecting the environment? 

The challenge was won by Leap Factory, the company that develops, produces and distributes highly energy-efficient, pre-engineered modular construction systems, which has found in Clivet the ideal partner to meet the needs of heating, air conditioning, domestic hot water production, management and remote monitoring of comfort in a sustainable and flexible way. 

The building and the system solution

The builder has been able to harmonise the house with the environment, creating prestigious structures, equipped with the best technologies in terms of building materials, furnishings, and finishes to meet the expectations of a high standard of living, sustainable at 360 degrees.

The 140 square metre, two-storey prefab house, assembled in just 60 days, has a structural frame made of micro-lamellar beech wood portals from controlled PEFC cultivation. The outer cladding is made of composite sandwich panels, with outer skins in osb3 and a high-density XPS core. Complementary thermal-reflective insulation with an air chamber closes a hyper-performing envelope package with revolutionary thermal transmittance ratios, weights and thicknesses, even with respect to the parameters of incidence between built surface and usable interior space. The opaque surfaces have a transmittance of 0.152 W/sq mK and the transparent ones an average transmittance of 0.9 W/sq mK.
All the façades, micro-ventilated, are clad in larch wood slats or pre-painted aluminium shingles, and the windows, with low-emissivity glass, are fitted with larch wood façade frames, allowing the aesthetic integration of these houses with the natural environment.

In terms of plant engineering, Leap Factory also opted for a high-tech solution, choosing Clivet as a partner with its complete comfort and energy management system, Clivet Smart Living, combined with a 2.28 kWp photovoltaic system.

Davide Francone, Energy Engineer at Leap Factory, explains
 "We found in CLIVET an excellent technological partner, attentive not only to comfort but also to the environment, with a complete, modular and flexible proposal, easy to install, which also includes thermoregulation, monitoring and remote control.
In this operation, the proactive and fast support of the pre-sales and after-sales technical service on site was fundamental in configuring and implementing the project, in a highly reliable and efficient manner."


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The solution and the results

The Clivet Smart Living system installed consists of:

  • Sphera EVO 2.0 heat pump with 250-litre storage tank for heating cooling and domestic hot water production, chosen for the quality of operation even at freezing temperatures, as the particular installation site required
  • 6 ELFORoom2 room terminals
  • 4 room thermostats connected to the Control4 NRG comfort assistant to better manage comfort for each room
  • Control4 NRG comfort and energy management system, which monitors and manages all elements of the plant, allowing real time visualisation of production and consumption data of the home, making intelligent use of available resources and raising awareness among users of the intelligent management of the renewable energy produced on site 
  • App for remote management of the entire system, which is particularly important in a holiday home context, as it allows owners to enter the house and always find the right temperature
  • The house is also prepared for the installation of the Sinergy single-phase hybrid inverter with energy storage, which would allow almost total energy independence.

The results

Architect Luca Gentilcore of Leap Factory comments:
"The integration of a high-performance building envelope with Clivet's Smart Living system was a winner and allowed us to guarantee thermal comfort at 1800 metres all year round, despite the challenging climatic conditions at high altitude. The house obtained energy class A4, in line with the principles of sustainable and bioclimatic design and with the needs of a high-level clientele attentive to environmental issues."


The protagonists

  • Architectural design: Leap Factory, Turin
  • Clivet Agency: Progetto Aria, Turin

Clivet units installed

  • Sphera EVO 2.0 heat pump (SQKN-YEE TC ACS250 + MSAN-YEE)
  • 6 ELFORoom2 room terminals
  • 4 HID-T6 room thermostats
  • Control4 NRG comfort and energy management system
  • Clivet Eye app for remote management of the entire system