Provision for Green Buildings

This Englishman’s castle is inspired by German manufacturing – the famed Huf Haus model of a factory-made home that is assembled on site to avoid one of the most energy intensive aspects of house-building, the construction. 

However, shipping an original Huf Haus across Europe is environmentally questionable in its own right, so Mr Holmes’s idea is for the property to be built on site using British-made materials.

Large feature windows will warm the house during the day while large concrete blocks built within in will act as thermal stores and release heat during the night, off-setting in part the less environmentally-friendly aspects of using concrete.

Very high insulation standards will retain as much heat as possible and sustainable materials in the build will ensure low carbon consumption.

Planned for a site next to the River Tees in Yarm, with the necessary licences in place the owners could draw water from the river to pass through heat pumps to heat the property, while chilled steel beam technology and natural ventilation will keep it cool. Top-up heating could be provided using a double-burning pyrolysis boiler which burns wood as well as the gas given off.

Although still subject to planning permission, for Steve Barker, head of town and country planning in the Tees Valley for BHP Develop (formerly the planning team Blackett Hart & Pratt), the project is an exciting local development as the region faces the energy efficiency challenge.

He says Britain still lags behind other countries – even as much as four decades behind the likes of Scandinavia and Switzerland – in tackling the issues of dwindling fossil fuel supplies and sustainable buildings, but says changes in planning policy are starting to have an impact.

The technologies are out there, and so is the drive from government and local authorities to push on – what seems to be lacking is consistency and compulsory minimum standards to really make a difference.

“We do have mainstream, national guidance now to tackle climate change,” says Steve, a former head of planning and environment at Stockton Borough Council, “but we still lack understanding about mainstream methods of how to put it into practice.

“Added to that is the fact that the expertise, understandably, is not there among members of planning committees who have genuine concerns about climate change but not always the understanding of new technologies.”

Large scale residential and commercial property developments are increasingly governed by national planning policy formed around the ground-breaking Merton Rule.

Pioneered by the London Borough of Merton, it requires the use of renewable energy to reduce annual carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the built environment.

Adopted by some local authorities around the country, it demands at least a ten per cent CO₂ reduction provided by renewables on new development sites, although some councils are going much further – Kirklees Council, in West Yorkshire, for example, has proposed that by 2011, 30 per cent of energy consumption in every one of its new buildings is from renewable sources.

In the North East, the ten per cent minimum target is included in the almost finalised Regional Spatial Strategy.

In addition, Steve says Building Regulations, which impact on planning decisions, are becoming ever more stringent.

“We are routinely seeing a requirement now that planning applications demonstrate ten per cent of energy use from renewable sources, but in my view we are looking at the issue through the wrong end of the telescope,” he says.

“For example, it’s relatively easy to show that a windmill and photovoltaic tiles in the roof will produce the necessary ten per cent. What’s more important is how much carbon is consumed in constructing and then running the building.

“Developers need to work far more closely with their planning consultant and architect at the very early stages of a scheme to design buildings that are sustainable from the outset and have a lower carbon footprint.

“If this part is done correctly, you might not need to use renewables and instead could incorporate features like thermal mass, large areas of concrete that store heat during the day and release it in the building at night.”

Other technologies are being developed rapidly.

A particular favourite for being one of the most sustainable sources of warmth are ground source heat pumps, which work especially well with underfloor heating, once considered a luxury but now becoming more mainstream in homes. 

The problem, and possibly one of the causes of the delay in some of these technologies becoming more widely used, is their newness and confusion in the market place about reliable suppliers.

For example, once popular photovoltaic roof tiles that generate electricity are now being shown to be unsustainable, a 125 year pay-back against a life span of the tiles that is less than a fifth of that. By comparison, the pay back of ground source heat pumps can be as little as five years while the annual running cost is around £400, highly competitive when compared with the rising cost of domestic heating oil of around £1,500 a year.

And sustainability is not just about heating homes. Just as air conditioning in offices and cars is common place, increasingly in the future, if the predictions of global warming are to be believed, people may look to methods of cooling their homes.

In domestic properties, ground source heat pumps can operate in reverse and provide natural cooling through an underfloor circuit.

In bigger buildings, such as schools and offices, chilled beam technology using the steelwork frame cascades cooling around the building.

“If we are to make a difference we need to be considering these new technologies, building homes and offices around them and developing energy management systems once they are operational,” says Steve. “At the moment renewables specialists are being brought in too late in the design process.”

The result is that more preparatory work needs to go into design, planning applications and the early stages of developments. The downside is that it can make the planning process, already the bane of many a developer’s life, even more lengthy, inflexible and costly. Speculative developments may become less likely but, on the other hand, it could encourage more social responsibility.  

And there is more good news.

On April 6 this year, the government relaxed the rules on permitted development. Whereas planning permission was once required for features like solar roof panels, biomass boilers and other microgeneration technologies, this may not now be necessary.

It may also help support the Code for Sustainable Homes,a new national standard for sustainable design and construction of new homes launched just over a year ago. It sets minimum standards for energy and water use and, in England, replaces the EcoHomes scheme.

The Code is designed to provide homebuyers with a single, nationally recognised assessment to help them understand the sustainability credentials of their new home and is a tool for builders to differentiate themselves in sustainability terms.

Schemes that receive government funding must comply with the Code and have to attain a level three pass when assessed against it.

Michael Torpey, a registered Code assessor with ElliottDent, in Sunderland, explains: “The main financial commitment that compliance entails is meeting a 25 per cent improvement on the dwelling emission rate over the target emission rate. Making the correct choice in how this improvement is achieved will have a fundamental effect on the financial viability of schemes.

“Although constructing in accordance with the Code is not compulsory for private developers we are involved in a number of schemes where local authorities require compliance.”

The Code is due to become a requirement of Building Regulations for all new build homes by 2010 on the way to the government’s target that all new homes should be carbon neutral by 2016.

Meanwhile, the government is also pushing forward with its Eco-towns Challenge, with plans for up to ten zero-carbon sustainable developments of between 5,000 and 20,000 homes built by 2020. A shortlist of 15 potential locations (none in the North East) has been drawn up for the towns, which are aimed at addressing the twin challenges of a major shortfall in housing and tackling climate change.

Of course much of the opportunity for creating energy efficient homes and offices relates to new build, a tiny percentage of the properties in the UK.

Improving existing housing stock to make it sustainable is perhaps where the real challenge lies, but at least the tide is turning when it comes to new homes.