Get Sust Issue 36 UK, Feature - Who'd live in a house like this?

Get Sust! issue 36

FEATURE

Who'd live in a house like this?

Heat your home from the passive gains off your pet pooch, or chill out in kiln-shaped style — the future takes various forms at BRE’s Innovation Park, as two Get Sust readers found out.

House builders are having a tough time. The “credit crunch” has forced a number of major developers to put projects on hold, or finish jobs that are on site and shelve new starts for the time being.

But instead of twiddling their thumbs while they wait for the economy to pick up, perhaps they should take the opportunity to re-think those projects they’ve got on the drawing board? After all, with housing in the Doldrums, they are going to need to tempt and inspire the house-buying public with something a little different...

And if they’re lacking inspiration, I recommend they should get themselves down to BRE’s Innovation Park where there’s plenty of food for thought about the way new houses ought look — and a few ideas they might be better off ignoring.

Get Sust took two winners from our 2007 reader recruitment drive on a private tour of the Innovation Park — the legacy of two OFFSITE events where major house-building innovators are putting their imaginations to the test.

There are six demonstration properties on the site — five houses and one scaled-down school - each demonstrating the now-familiar range of ecological and sustainable techniques and equipment. Speaking in “estate agent mode” for a moment, there’s something to tempt all tastes and budgets, ranging from the futuristic kiln-shaped Hanson Eco-house to the £60,000 Osborne “affordable home” that’s so well insulated you could heat the home from the passive gains of a medium-sized dog!

These concept houses may not be the greatest of architectural statements, but they certainly demonstrate some of the creativity that sustainability is said to hamper (see this month's Comment). The question is, could you really live in among the creativity?

There’s no doubt that the Hanson Eco-House is impressive and innovative. Featuring the company’s QuickBuild walling system, highly insulating composite flooring, prefabricated blockwork panels for partition walls and triple-glazed low-e Krypton-filled glazing system, there’s lots to think about.

Bedrooms and a bathroom lead off the spacious ground-floor entrance hall; while stairs rise to an open-plan high-ceiling living space. The idea is to generate a stack effect, keeping the bedrooms on the cooler ground floor, with warm air rising through the building to escape through the ventilating roof lantern. This seems like a great idea, and walking into the loft-style living area is like stepping into the pages of a design magazine. Is it practical, though, for a contemporary family? (I bet the spiders will love that lofty, hard-to-reach ceiling.) On the other hand, the proprietary window system used downstairs, which has built-in vertical ventilation panels for fresh air AND security, shows that some of the practicalities have been considered.

The Sigma Home from the Stewart Milne Group also raises questions of practicality — a three-storey five split-level house is hard work to maintain, but perhaps running up and down all those stairs would do wonders for the nation’s obesity problem? Overall, though, this home (actually we saw one of a pair of semis) reaches Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) Level 5. Innovations include DuPont’s Energain phase change plasterboard, which absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night, and an Ecoplay rainwater/greywater toilet. There’s also a solar chimney at the top of the stair core for passive ventilation and micro-wind turbines and solar collectors on the roof.

If low-cost and quick construction are on your shopping list, then the Osborne house could be the one for you — and your dog (for passive heating). This house is one of the first on the site and so pre-dates the CSH, but with emissions 40% lower and airtightness 10 times better than current building regulations requirements there’s still plenty to shout about. In particular, because it is designed to meet the Lifetime Homes standard you get a more ‘conventional’ product — you could retro-fit a stair lift, and you’ll be able to get larger items of furniture up the stairs (unlike some of the houses we saw); and with electrical heating in the skirting boards there’s more wall space and fewer corners for dust to hide.

And talking of corners, this house features corner windows — said to be good for security because you get a wider view of the outside world. But watch out for Big Brother — the demonstration house can incorporate a CCTV system to monitor your every move. Said to be a boon to the elderly and people who need regular medication, it’s a feature that’s sure to spark controversy if housing associations take it up in anything other than an experiment like this.

Next door at the Kingspan “Lighthouse” some of the same principles apply — but this newer dwelling reaches Code 6, thanks to a biomass boiler, rainwater harvesting, whole house mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR), passive cooling and other high-performance systems. This house has the edge over it’s low-cost neighbour in terms of outward appearance, but inside it was more conventional than the host of technologies would suggest, and the combination of technologies would present occupants with a steeper learning curve.

Then on to the least outwardly impressive home on the Park — the Swedish Eco-tech “Organics” home. But don’t be fooled by the dull exterior — this house is more than an Ikea-a-like. Taking just four days to build (excluding slab), thanks to extensive use of off-site manufacture, and at just £99 per square foot, you get a lot of features on a small footprint. For starters, this is two homes, not one. There’s a self-contained apartment on the ground floor, and a two-storey home above, offering the potential for flexible living for several generations of the family.

Although this home only merits CSH level 4 it’s packed with clever ideas and has extremely good U-values and high levels of airtightness - achieved in part by the off-site ethos that included providing channelling/pipework for the solar water heating system in the factory, and with no wiring in exterior walls. This latter feature is unconventional, but cunning. Wiring runs down the central column of the building, and is accessed through sliding panels, just like opening a cupboard door.

Finally, after you’ve viewed the homes, check out the site-wide sustainable urban drainage system (SUDS), integral to the landscaping — so well integrated you won’t have noticed it on your travels.

The most noticeable difference between each of these homes was — predictably — light levels and indoor air quality. The contrasts were, in one or two cases, quite dramatic. But we’re not going to tell you which house won the ‘fresh-air challenge’. You’ll have to go to see for yourself!

Our BRE guide was full of information and enthusiasm for the Innovation Park, and copious technical details are available from the individual developers. But the final word should go to Chilombe Simwami, a Get Sust reader currently completing an MSc in Renewable Energy and Architecture at the University of Nottingham, who said of his visit:

“Although numerous challenges may stand in the way of actually creating a more sustainable world, today’s visit has motivated me to continue learning and pursuing a career centred around the sustainable built environment.”

Learn more:

	•	Details of the demonstration homes — including the brand new Daily Mail home by Barratt — are at www.bre.co.uk/page.jsp?id=634
	•	Thanks to BRE and our tour guide for the day.