Green Homes

LIVING THE GREEN DREAM
by David Hoppit

Jeremy Harrall has a dream. He knows he can’t save the world [well, not immediately] but he aims to make his Lincolnshire homeland the greenest, most environmentally friendly place in Great Britain – and his dream is already becoming reality. Jeremy, an award-winning doctor of architecture, started realising the dream in 2002 by rolling up his sleeves and building his own earth covered home and office close to the little town of Long Sutton, near The Wash, wheeling hundreds of barrow loads of Lincolnshire soil to cover the solid concrete structure.

Drive along the road towards Gedney and, if you glance left by a bus stop, you might see a shrub-covered hillock, which anywhere else in UK would not seem unusual; but this is Lincolnshire, where hillocks hardly happen. The structure, more like a giant mole hill than a house, is probably the ‘greenest’ house in Great Britain and it has been home ever since to Jeremy, his wife Kay and three children, Penelope, aged 15, Royston 14 and Molly, who is 12.

The trial was so success that this summer his practice, SEArch Ltd [sustainable ecological architects], teamed up with Lincolnshire Rural Housing Association to design a community for six families in a remarkable experimental village nearby, named Unity Gardens. Nearly 50 families answered a small local advertisement for volunteers to occupy the earth-bonded homes [a veritable mumbling of molehills] and the list was eventually whittled down to just six. What they were letting themselves in for, very willingly, was a dose of the good life with knobs on.

The pioneers are having their lifestyles and energy consumption monitored and recorded and they also agreed to grow their own fruit and vegetables on the ample allotments at the rearof the development. Some have already built chicken houses for egg and meat production.

The adult residents of Unity Gardens [the site was bought from the Odd Fellows] represents a spread of ages, from 30 to nearly 70, but all are having a honeymoon period in their new homes. The children range from toddlers to teenagers. Families at Unity Gardens enjoyed massive savings on energy costs during the first few weeks of occupation. The shared 35 foot wind turbine and solar panels produced five times the energy they needed, bringing each of them an income of about £40 a month from electricity sold to the national grid. Taken over the year, including winter months, they are expecting tp pay nothing for their electricity. The earth covered bungalows, which cost little more than conventional houses, have huge south-facing windows to capture the sun's warmth, with high thermal mass walls surrounded by a further 12 inches of wall, floor and ceiling insulation.

The aim is for the houses to be what Jeremy calls "autonomous" - or at least as near autonomous as possible. Each house 'harvests' rain water, stored in large underground tanks, which is used for flushing toilets and supplying washing machines. "We have evolved into a happy, sharing community, each keeping an eye on the children and the properties, so if we forget to lock up it doesn't really matter," says 61-year-old Barbara Holmes. "We have all thrown ourselves into the good life with enthusiasm. I make bread every day and we all save as much water as we can for irrigating the allotments."

Barbara's husband Steven [51] was equally enthusiastic. "We had a 1950s two-bedroom ground floor council flat in Spalding, but people upstairs were noisy. I used to get home from work, plonk down in front of the telly and go to sleep, "Now,as soon as I can, I'm out on the allotment, whatever the weather. Ou lives have been completely changed by this move - changed for the better." The six bungalows have either two bedrooms or three and tenants pay weekly rents of between £80 and £83 to the housing association. The development is not far from shops in Long Sutton and Wisbech is a short bus ride away. The Ship public house is just 300 yards down the road.

One of the youngest residents is 33-year-old Claire Lovett, who moved to the community with partner Clive and daughters Maisie, aged six and Charlotte, who was three, on July 17th, the same day as the rest of the families. Strolling round the allotments we marvelled at her girls' 'champion' sunflowers. "We moved in on a day when there was a tornado, with hail and lightning; but since then life here has been idyllic - we all love the houses and the sense of community," said Claire.

Nearby Andy Thompson, aged 30, his wife Jo'ann and eight-year-old son Frank were collecting the day's supply of eggs from the flock of Black Rock hens, before earthing up the leekss and hoeing the football sized cabbages. "We love it here and spend most of our spare time pottering on the allotment. The house is snug and bright and we are pretty well self sufficient...the best move that we could possibly have made," said electrical engineer Andy.

At present the six houses have a strange appearance - beautiful they are not; but as the shrubs and ivy planted in the earth banks grow and mature they will dissolve into the rural scene, with only the wind turbine betraying the existence of a community. The houses are beside what Jeremy calls "a living street", which he says provides vehicle and pedestrian compatability. There are no hard kerbs or official parking places, freeing up the street for recreational and pedestrian use.

The houses achieve virtually zero heating status, with vastly reduced CO2 emissions. They are Code 5 in the new building regulation category but are actually more environmentally friendly than the top Code 6. "Perversely, the coding does not promote environmentally friendly property and it actually penalises houses such as these because they use little or no fossil fuels," commented Dr Harrall.

His crusade is now gathering pace. Soon he hopes to build 49 more conventional houses nedar Unity Gardens ["better boxes", he calls them] and already two families have completed self-build "molehills", one overlooking Rutland Water and the other near East Tudenham, in Norfolk. Jeremy and his practice SEArch is also spearheading a campaign which he calls "Greening the box". Working alongside Wherry Housing Association he is taking a poorly insulated 1920s three-bedroom semi and turning it into a truly energy efficient home. The aim is to demonstrate to the housing industry that it is cheaper and more environmentally friendly to up-grade existing housing stock than it is to demolish and rebuild. For further information email info@cocoonclub.co.uk.

CAN SAVING ENERGY SELL HOMES?

Those gleaming solar panels fitted onto the roof of a house on GRAND DESIGNS might look flashy and scream 'green' - but are they just ec0-icing, or an environmentally sound investment that could increase the value of your home?    When it comes to making a house sell, energy efficiency is becoming as desirable as period features and a nice view,   This is bacaked up by research from the Energy Saving Trust, which reveals that half of UK homeowners believe properties with green features sell quicker and 54 per cent of potential buyers are willing to pay more for them - an average of £3,350 to be precise.

So which energy saving features will boost the value of your home most effectively?  The answer depends on the type of property you have and the sorts of buyers you'll attract.   No on expects a period country house to have high levels energy efficiency and so for potential buyers it's unlikely to be a priority, whereas younger and greener-minded buyers might pay a premium for eco features.   However, anything that demonstrably reduces a property's running costs will appeal to buyers and energy efficiency is an increasing consideration

Most people already take advantage of double-glazing, loft and boiler insulation, yet fewer properties boast lesser-known measures like cavity wall insulation, under-floor insulation and energy efficient condensing boilers.   Their comparative rarity can make these features useful selling points.   Solar panels aren't inexpensive - and not guaranteed to appeal to all potential buyers - however, with grants available to cut the cost of installation, they may offer a means of increasing the value that major work such as roof repairs adds to your home.

So far, individual energy saving features seem more effective at increasing demand for a property than the Energy Performance Certificates (EPC), which sellers must now include in Home Information Packs (HIPs).   However, EPC ratings could increase in value as saving day-to-day running costs becomes more of a priority for buyers.

YOUR ENERGY-EFFICIENT GUIDE TO THE INTERNET

Have you sent an email lately, booked theatre tickets online or looked up an old school friend through a social network?   most of us wouldn't stop to think about the environment impact of such things.  But, all that might need to change.

The giant data centres that power our web surfing and store our emaials consume vast amounts of electricity, adding up to a worrying carbon footprint for the worldwide web.    Here are a few suggestions for cutting the energy cost of your web use.

Before you turn on….    Don’t waste energy leaving your computer on standby.   The power consumed by the information and communications technology industry is over two per cent of the emissions problem causing climate change and most energy is wasted when the computer is left on and unused.    When you get home from work you don’t leave your car running overnight.    Consider investing in a power-saving device like the Ecobutton, which puts your computer into energy-saving mode whenever the Ecobutton is pressed, making it ideal for a quick tea break.   Simply press the keyboard on your return and the screen returns to where you left off.     You can even see how much carbon and money you’ve saved while you were away.

When you connect….     How bright is your screen?   The brightest setting on a monitor uses twice the energy of the lowest setting so turn it down as low as you can.   Screen savers are not necessary on modern monitors and studies  show they actually consume more energy than allowing the monitor to dim when it’s not in use.   Go into your settings folder to switch your screen saver off.   While you’re there, have a look at your power management settings.   To improve the power efficiency of your computer, the Climate Savers Computing initiative recommends the following power management settings, these settings can save you more than 600KWh annually, roughly half a ton of CO2.

Monitor/display sleep:   After 15 minutes or less                                                                                               

Turn off computer/hard drive sleep:    After 15 minutes or less

System standby/sleep:   after 30 minutes or less

When you’re surfing….      The amount of power you consume when connecting to the web depends on your online activity but also on the resources you’re using on your PC.    So if the system memory, hard drive and graphics are being used heavily, such as in online video or gaming applications, the energy consumption will be higher than just casually viewing a web page or doing a simple email.

With this in mind, consider the sites you visit.   Those with active banners or animated ads prevent your machine from entering sleep mode; the same is true for computer games and some software packages, even when paused or the active window is minimised.

Finally, millions of us have web-based email accounts such as Gmail or Hotmail but often fail to consider the environment impact of doing so.   While it’s difficult to estimate how much energy it takes to store our emails, it’s thought that between 10 and 20 MB of data uses up 1lb of coal every year.   So ensure items in your deleted and spam files are permanently deleted and audit your inbox to keep your carbon consumption down.